Hike to the falls

 

It is the best night, the worst night, the last night, the first night of the New Year.

It's the dog's favorite dark.

For shortly past 11 tonight, we'll load the red sled with cheese and cold apple wine, a few brittle bits of white birch, tuck a harmonica in my parka and begin the short hike to the waterfall.

It is New Year's Eve again, that final, magic, white night of the year.

You come too. Light the lantern. 

Christmas is over. 

For some of us, Christmas has been over for a long time. It's too often guilt and greed and gluttony. Fat little families and the Yule drool of over-stuffed, bad-tempered consumer children. And in this Covid winter of masks and lonely, you might even miss that.

Tonight is another matter entirely.

New Year's Eve is a clean, cold, secular holiday which happily resists drunks and the animators of TV cartoon specials.

It's a fine time to dodge imitation icicle lights, car horns on Yonge St. or an afternoon snooze of imported football.

It isn't sitting at home feeling sorry for yourself, or a teary, beery pub-crawl where strangers once got sick on your shoes.

Put on your mittens. Follow me. Leave all that behind ... the yahoos, the yelling, this cursed and awful year.

Crossing the road on the high hill, the snow scrunches underfoot like cornstarch. Our breath floats away in icy fog, like 2020. Don't be sad. It's the way things ought to be.

The dog pads along in happy wonder, his paws placed carefully in our footprints.

We leave the road now, down the ravine with stars overhead and the gurgle of the half-frozen brook, in night cloaks of ice.

It's very quiet.

And cold.

And not lonely, but very alone.

We are alone in this world. We come that way. We go alone as well. New Year's Eve is a perfect time to rejoice in yourself, your own magical renewal in the baffling universe.

Catch a snowflake on your tongue.

Do you know the odds of eating that single crystal in all the world? The stars shine and we are here for--the 25th? 26th?---time at the frozen waterfall.

The dog picks snow clumps from his paws. I light the fire while you make a snow angel. And by flickering lantern light, the icy falls shimmer. High above, in the tops of trees, an animal cry floats by on the night wind. Wolf? Polar owl?

We sit on the buffalo sled robe, a sharp pang of cold apple wine in our throats, looking deep, deep into the fire.

Where are Doug Ford or Dr. Faucci tonight? Who cares?

We sit in this snowdrift like wolves, singing in our souls and baying at the sky. We will be in love, and out of love, and somewhere in between, suspended in the hypnotic hiss of fire.

Harmonica notes float away like snow swirls, rising in icy spirals upwards to the breeze.

The fire crackles, and from over the hill the ice-bound lake crackles back.

Snowdrifts shift ... the hiss ... a whisper ... a lover turning in bed ... the noise of rabbit whiskers when a nose crinkles ... snow crystals tumble into drifts ... drifts lift away as days ... fall  into one another ...  the years, the sifting, shifting snow.

Relish a crisp northern New Year's Eve in a Zen forest. Trees fall in silence because there's no human to hear them.

We're here! We see it!

You remember a half-forgotten song. The dog digs a hole, but not enough for a snow cave. The sharp apple wine cuts the throat like an icicle.

And sometime, between the lighting of the logs and the last embers, it is 2021. And it begins to snow.

Hey friend. I really like ya.

Thanks for being. Thanks.

The bottle is empty.

Our toes and noses threaten to disappear.

There is nothing left to connect us to 2020. Without a cheer or whimper, we put out the fire and let it slip away.

The waterfall rumbles, ice spiders weave invisible webs overhead and we walk, arm in arm, back to the road. The dog soils a snowdrift in celebration.

Hey, get on the sled!

With a push you are off, hurtling into downhill darkness. The dog disappears in chase.

The slide sound of sled falls away, far below me. The sky shines, alive with stars ... and four lines come again from the depths of memory...

The world stands out on either side

No wider than the heart is wide.

Above the earth is stretched the sky,

No higher than the heart is high.

Yes.

Happy New Year.

See ya...

 

--GrahamBezantphoto/1970s