Sacred Wednesday

I'm beginning to feel like a broken record (which will be an incomprehensible simile to anyone under the age of, say, 35).

It's still just bloody COLD here. This morning's low was an improvement over the previous: -8 degrees Fahrenheit. I still wouldn't call it warmer.

It's been one of those disconnected days. Wednesdays are supposed to be my "reserved for art-making" days... sacred and inviolate... but somehow this one got away from me. I did paint this little study of dried cucumber vine into my journal... but otherwise I got involved in a client proposal, and gathering reference for a project, and fixing some code on my website, and making exhibition plans, and doing laundry, and.....

You know how it goes.

Early afternoon I decided things had gotten out of hand and I headed out to the trail. It was startling to discover that Sands Lake was half iced-over! In the five winters I've been here, there has never been more than a thin line of frost around the edges.

Days like this, in which my plans disintegrate completely by 9:00am, it's even more important to walk. To distract myself from mental chatter and restlessness. To pay attention to a world bigger than the little vortex I create around myself and my "doings."

I noted simple things today-- no headline news. Ice on the lake (dead duck frozen into the crust). Mergansers under a willow tangle on the shore. Slush floating down the river. Squeak of snow underfoot. Watercress still growing bright green in a sheltered ditch, despite the unrelenting cold. Goldfinches. Barking dogs somewhere up the hill. Cold sting of little ice crystals blown up from drifts and into my face. It didn't get completely dark until after 5:30pm.

Huh. I guess this day turned out sacred after all.