Winter

"The French have a nice feeling for simplicity. They merely wear sweaters indoors and sometimes hats as well. They believe in light, yes, but only as the heavens provide it."

"December the third. A day that promises nothing, that passes quickly. In the afternoon, a light snow, a snow so faint and small bodied that it seems nothing more than a manifestation of the cold."

- James Salter, A Sport and a Pastime

This is the time of year that I ache for winter. Utterly weary of the heat and the blaring, harsh light of summer, I long for pearl-grey overcast skies of spun glass and the damp, moist air that seems to hover just at the point of precipitation.

No longer living in the mountains, I miss the sense that I am somehow connected to the natural world and it's cycles. Our whole society, as affluent and supposedly geared toward the fulfillment of the individual as it seems on the surface, is really a voracious, indifferent machine. A machine that expects us to wake the same time each 24 hour period, regardless of the position of the earth in relation to the sun. That demands we produce a set, predictable percentage of the G.N.P. per said 24 hour period regardless of the season. The educational system provides daycare so that two parents can work, and churns out new cogs for the machine. Young cogs that are not the same shape as all the others are inefficient, pressured to conform, and when they don't are hated and disdained as worthless.

Sometimes I look at the sky, and the rocks, and I am thankful. At peace, knowing that they were here long before our idiotic culture, and that they will still be here when it is gone. The falling snow, a missive from the primeval wildness; whispering, murmuring, that it will return one day.