A Tennessee Christmas Remembered

I’ll end the year with another note from my book, Kayaking with Lambs. Have a Merry Christmas.

’Tis an hour or two before midnight when, walking stick in my right hand, oil lamp in my left, and Becky at my side, I stroll out the back door for the somewhat traditional Christmas walk up the hill pasture, while Cindy stays behind in the warm house, the other two dogs curled at her feet.

Up the rise by the pawpaw trees and through the gates we pass before entering the wooded lane, where the lantern throws imaginative and ominous shadows. Becky stays close to me instead of choosing to explore the night. An owl hoots far away. The tires of a late-night pickup whir on the highway below; they go silent for moments as the truck rounds a bend, then their sound reemerges just below the farm before fading into the distance.

Nearby lights from the neighbors we still do not know filter through the trees. The man and woman have been here for a decade, but I hear tell that they are soon moving back to Miami. Having spurned ours and others’ overtures to be neighborly, and apparently more comfortable as city dwellers, like salmon they now return to the stream that spawned them.

I turn the corner of the lane and begin climbing the hill pasture. The remnants of the late-fall forages gather thick around my boots. I breathe heavier as I crest the ridge, and the full moon comes into view. Always an hour or two late to rise in these steeper wooded valleys, its light dwarfs the one I carry.

I stand for ten minutes staring at the familiar face, unable to turn my gaze—just me and Becky and the man in the moon on this cold Christmas Eve. Eventually he slips behind a sleeve of clouds, breaking the spell. I turn and face back to the west. Our farmhouse sits below, the windows beckoning with an inviting glow.

Off in the distance, on both the northern and southern horizons, blinks the red of a newly invasive species, a cell phone tower. Unwanted and unloved, it signals our fear of being alone.

I call for my dog, unnoticed at my feet until she rises and begins without prompting the journey down the hill. I trudge through the tangled grasses, back down the lane, through the gates, and into the house. “I’m here,” I announce.

I lower the wick on the lantern, and the flame goes out. I unplug the lights on the Christmas tree, pour a nightcap, and ascend the stairs. A little later, before turning out the house lights, I ponder whether tomorrow will see the first lambs of the season. Many of our ewes are heavily pregnant. And, as often occurs, that most innocent of livestock is born on this farm around the twenty-fifth of December.