Gift of Clouds and Light

Dramatic sunsets require just the right balance of clouds: enough to serve as a good canvas for the paintbrush of evening light, but not so many that they block the light altogether. I wasn’t expecting much yesterday evening.

As I headed out my cabin door, pails in hand, to get water, I glanced westward through the trees. I saw that the mercurial alchemy of light and clouds was shifting. I went back inside, set down the pails, and grabbed my jacket and camera. In mingled caution and haste, I navigated my way over icy snowdrifts, following the path to my shore to watch.

The western horizon glowed rose and gold. A waxing moon, three days from full, climbed in the eastern sky behind me. A cool breeze brushed my cheek and ruffled my hair. The ice covering the lake was quietly rumbling, as it has been doing on and off for days: a sound like a thunderstorm brewing in the distance, so low-pitched that it’s almost below the threshold of hearing, a sound that is felt as much as heard.

As the light faded, I resumed my errand, filling my pails at the pump and hauling the water back to my cabin. I brought firewood from my shed to keep me warm through the night. I paused en route at my splitting stump, reducing some of the larger pieces of wood to more easily burnable sizes with my axe and sledgehammer.

As I settled into my cabin, chores done for the evening, I felt peace well up within me. The thought struck me that, in this moment, there was nothing in the world that I wanted beyond what I already had, right here and right now.