Still, quiet and slow, the snow…… and also my internet. It will be a February up north where we remember the real reason why we came here. To walk in the snow-filled woods, venture out on the frozen lake and stand in the vast white tundra dotted with a few tip-ups. The bare trees expose sheds, barns and cabins that are no longer shy in the winter landscape.

But a bit of internet would be so lovely as we sit by the fire and long for a smidgen of Netflix. The public library has DVD’s that are little treasures to me on a winter night, watching unheard of and forgotten movies.   I’m happy I took the time to seek them out. That is what this is about. Time. Slow. Spinning wheels. Can I do it? I’m trying.

We are too far from the road for the modern world to find us. We can get a sad little signal, and we have strangely adjusted and rejoiced in brief moments of reruns of West Wing.

We are baking Icelandic brown bread that is in a slow oven for 8 hours. This is symbolic of our day. The sun dips slowly behind the old farmhouse and the shadows are long on the lake, it is light until almost 5:30 and I will celebrate that small victory that signifies a winter ebbing away. But also a winter cherished for all the snowshoe tracks I leave in the woods and around the island. To stand on the ice in the big part of the lake and listen to the quiet is a special kind of slow.

 

“THE WAIT: It is life in slow motion,
it’s the heart in reverse,
it’s a hope-and-a-half:
too much and too little at once.

It’s a train that suddenly
stops with no station around,
and we can hear the cricket,
and, leaning out the carriage

door, we vainly contemplate
a wind we feel that stirs
the blooming meadows, the meadows
made imaginary by this stop.”

― Rainer Maria Rilke