Dawn at the equator

It was early when my eyes opened from sleep this morning. Foggy mind prevailed, meanwhile an impulse to be outdoors launched in my head. The light, sifting through frost-tinged windows was pale rose, the sun yet to emerge. Without pause for morning rituals— tooth brush, coffee, and woodstove—I threw on my parka, fur hat and boots and launched out. On the veranda, the air hung still and silent. The birds had yet to arrive at the feeders. My boots hit the road.

North of my home, not far from the front door, there’s a gentle bulge in the landscape, one of many shapes that describe a once glacial valley. At the crest of that hill, row upon row of grape vines huddle in deep snow waiting out the last days of winter, waiting for the return of friendly Spanish voices. The light, now a garden pink, caresses each turn of ice with the soothing hand of a lover; a vent of arctic air fills my lungs as I walk to the tune of my heartbeat. Meanwhile, mind and legs seem to have opposing views on the idea of a March excursion before dawn; before coffee even.

While break of day will soon be here, I make my way to a spot where I often find myself when sunsets reign the heavens. Off the road I shift over a snow bank and track a stranger’s boot prints seized at once by the cold and more or less resembling frozen desserts. I’m headed to a park gazebo, one that has held a place on the hill for all the years I have lived here. A wooden picnic table, octagonal in shape, sits in the middle of the structure bidding anyone, everyone, to sit awhile. From the gazebo’s rest, neighbouring Slab Creek murmurs its verse through openings of ice cover, while through the hush come echoes of summer’s past, stanzas, the voices of children at play; the crisp blue, red and yellow ladders and tunnels and swings attest to innocence and joy.

By now the sun appears through the fabric of trees holding in the wetlands; sun breaking through here and there offers a bas relief of light and shadow, of rise and fall, a warming paysage on a frigid wintry morning, here in Pleasant Valley.

It’s the sun I’m apparently after. The pale of winter has captured my inner world, pulling me down, and my mind recognizes the signs. They call it many things, winter blues, seasonal mood disorder due to low light and an accompanying lowering of emotion-governing serotonin in the brain. Foods and play can be remedies, but a sunrise is also on my list. Here in the stillness the woodpecker’s rattle carries from afar; then the reprise of the call of the cardinal, the bark of the crows and the harbinger of spring in the wetlands, the red-winged blackbird.

They say that the further one lives from the equator, the more are populations affected by light. But I’m happy here, so like the grapevines I’ll watch the shadows stir moment by moment, the sun step its way around the horizon day-by-day. The voices of a new season call while nearing me as the earth goes round. We’ve arrived at spring solstice.