The Sun Changes Everything

It has been nearly six full months of winter. The cozy and snug part of winter has diminished as hunkering down fatigue grows. Continually grey skies and leafless trees suck the life out of the most cheerful folks. I would be one of those people – I love weather, pretty much love winter and snow and the limitations on normal life that they sometimes impose. But this year, my enjoyment turned to tolerance and then to patience and then finally to stoicism, barely achieved.

But today, the sun was shining and the sky had not a single cloud. So we cancelled what we had planned on doing and decided to stay outside. It made me remember the deals I’d make with my mother to stay out at dusk – for a half hour, for fifteen minutes, for five – because the air smelled so green and there was mud on my shoes and the wind lifted my bangs off my forehead just the slightest amount. That’s how today was.

We went to a nature preserve and hiked for a bit. The trees were arching and posing for us and there were shadows – because of the sun – and the path we took was wide and even and just very lovely.

We walked past this tree and then I turned back to look again. When I was a child, I thought there were little creatures wearing aprons that lived inside trees like this, a function of fairy tales taken literally and of my brother’s tales about elves dancing under shrubs in our front yard. I believed all of it for a very long time.

With all its shredding and the sun hitting it just so, this was the most beautiful tree on the trail. It reaffirmed for me that old and wrecked things are often stunning – we rush too fast to the new and flawless. On a cloudy day, this scene would feel like destruction and death, with the sun, the splaying of the tree trunk, the pieces of the trunk strewn about – it’s art. The sun changes everything.

________________

Originally published in 2022, but so true today. The snow is gone and the sun is out in Wisconsin. Finally.