The month when the light is precious

I've just put up a sunrise header for the rest of the month.  Quite a change from all the Christmas photos, isn't it?  For me December is the month when I see Venus in the sky when I first look out in the morning.  While I eat breakfast the sun rises--on mornings that aren't cloudy-- far south of where it rises in the summer.  It sillhouette's barren tree tops as it comes up with a the redness of determination then spreads an orangey-pink.  I purposely chose an apartment that faces east because I am an early riser.

Lights are my favorite thing about December--not the garish multicolored ones and I vehemently dislike those "icicle" fringes on house fronts. I'm comforted because people consciously or unconsciously are still need to make artificial light when the days are short and most of us find ourselves eating dinner when it's dark outside.  Here on Cape Cod, I love driving on Rte. 6A which is a winding two-lane road among older houses of every sort from grand homes meant a hundred years ago to hold large families and a few servants, to tiny cottages with only four little rooms. Along the stretch I most often drive from Barnstable through Yarmouth to Dennis the houses use only white lights, often only as electric candles in their windows.  I find a tranquility driving there although driving a very curvy road on a dark night with too many car lights coming toward me means nearly all my attention is on the road and not on the grace of the simple decorations.

We are now, of course, in the festival of Chanukah -- the festival of lights.  I was surprised quite a few years ago when traveling in India in late October to see that Dawali is a kind of festival of lights although it is also a festival of the angry and dangerous goddess Kali and has much in common with Halloween. After leaving garishly lighted Calcutta (shortly thereafter to reclaim the name Kolkata) we drove up into the Himalayan foothills to Darjeeling and discovered, in the evening, houses outlined with lights just as many American houses do.  The year was waning as it passed the solstice and they, too, felt the need of assurance that the light would not vanish.  The need for light is a deep part of our nature; much as we feel we have mastered nature, it is good to remember our dependence on the sun.

Sky, sea, rocks

This ring of stones is one of the enduring artifacts spontaneously build at the end of the mile long spit of land where I like to walk. This photo was taken a year or so ago; over the last few months the ring has become more distinctly architected (if that's a word). The outer larger stones are more even and the inside is "paved" with smaller stones, the majority of them white or light gray.

Today was a gift of Indian summer, mid-60s, a perfect blue sky, a calm sea, a few boats near the horizon. I walked out to the end of the spit and sat on the edge of the ring of stones. In such a place, even with a few others walking about, I feel in touch with archetypal peace in nature. I have no enemies to fear there. A gull stood at the edge of the water possibly contemplating me, possibly oblivious. I'm told in a class with a psychologist that even infants at 4 months have a sense of numerosity. I think all people respond to circles, be they stone, glens in the forest, wooden corrals or other structures. The impulse to make the circle of stones and the nearby cairn of which I've written several times, is very basic. A circle, of course is a metaphor for completeness ... I am, thanks to the course, unsure of the difference between a literal thing and a conceptual metaphor. The circle is literal, of course, but I think the conceptual part has to do with the feeling engendered sitting there.

I noticed that the stones were various, six or eight different kinds. All of Cape Cod is glacier-built, its composition is a composite of debris gathered and dumped by the last ice age so these stones came from a variety of places. They are probably different ages, differences of a millions of years. I only know enough to know they weren't originally all mixed together; that they are is a gift -- the circle a kind of jewel box of the history of the earth. While I sit on a fairly recent and certainly fragile small bit of land. I, of course, am far more fragile than the land. But I can touch vast history in my circle of stones, while beyond I am encircled by blue sea and sky. A lovely, lovely day to remember when the gray rains and snows of winter discourage me from walking that mile to the circle of stones.

After Irene

Simply by being there several times a week I become a shoreline expert -- sort of. I seethe changes. I was eager to see what Irene's winds did to "my" beach. We had almost no rain here but a day of continuous wind, which didn't seem to me to be especially violent. Yesterday I did not take my camera but today I did. I was there before 9:00 when almost no one else was around. The above picture is the shore, swept clean of nearly all loose sand. Most of it seems to have landed on the other side of the spit. It buried some of the dune grass closest to the shore. Today I notice that the tide has dub 3 or 4 inch deep trenches halfway up the beach. At that hour tbe tide was about as far out as it was going to get. So the beach was at its widest.
The top photo was taken from near where the public access is. The distant view is toward the end of the mile-long spit of land - with a fresh water inlet on the other side. It's only 50 to 100 feet wide until 3/4s of the way out where the seashore curves and the back side widens into a small marsh with several little kettle ponds. At the very end is a rocky area that is under the tide about half the time.
Out where the marshy part is the sand was deposited in the grass, very deeply in some places. Here are two pictures of new dunes covering the grass. Also the shore of the inlet side is much narrower suggesting some of this sand is from there also.
The rocky area is a sort of fat period at the end of a bent exclamation mark. Last year it was bordered with gnarled little trees, all living and apparently healthy. Over the winter most of those trees disappeared. Apparently the sand beneath their roots was eaten away and then they were carried away by the tide. Only one, the largest, of those gnarled trees was left this spring. But its roots were exposed and it did not sprout leaves. People used it to hang broken sea shells on which became plentiful as much as a month ago. Now this tree has been much broken -- the remnants of a bonfire on the very end of the spit shows lots of twisted limbs from this tree that apparently didn't burn well. Since Irene it's roots are almost all exposed and it's this sad wraith of what it was a year ago.
A short distance before the dead tree is this larger, still healthy one. Until Irene it was back from the shore a couple of feet, one had to climb a low bank to get to it to hang broken seashells on it's lower branches which were without leaves although the upper ones had and still have leaves. Obviously it is the next one that will be deprived of its footing and may follow the fate of it's neighbor by next spring.

A woman I often chat with on the beach -- she comes possibly more regularly than I -- said she thought the "period" part of the spit might become an island. That makes sense to me. It will be interesting to see. As can be seen in these pictures, this is a lovely and usually peaceful place for an early morning walk. It was a very beautiful morning beneath that sky where the temperature was about 70.