“All along the echoes sing the same delight.” — Susan Cooper, in her poem, “The Shortest Day”.
It is getting down to the Christmas wire. The radio station is playing all the grumpy Christmas songs. To be fair to KHNS, community radio for Haines, Klukwan and Skagway, I did too on my country show last week. Dolly Parton’s Hard Candy Christmas, Merle Haggard’s If we Make it Through December, and Robert Earl Keen’s Merry Christmas from the Family is my number # 1 favorite Christmas song. # 2 is Handel’s Messiah which I don’t play on the Back Country Show, obviously, but this morning on KHNS there was an NPR special from New York or Boston, I forget which, all about Handel and how he wrote it, playing while I wrapped presents, and made stew, chili and bread (to be ahead for family feeding this week.) I keep the local radio on because the weather forecast and the Earth, Air & Water Report is much more fun to listen to than to read on my phone. Somehow, the same information is more local, and more believable when someone I know is telling it to me as they look out the window at the wind and the waves while warming their feet with an electric space heater. This is us, not some computer voice from tech-whatever. Extreme cold warning, freezing spray, highs below zero.
Chip is very pleased with all the firewood he cut last summer.
The weather is all we are talking about. At Joanne and Phyliss’s open house, at the pool, at the store. Yes, I know this is Alaska, and December, and that Alaska in winter is the definition of cold. Santa Claus lives here for goodness sake—but, this cold snap is the longest anyone around here can remember. It is the talk of the town. It’s so cold now that the various locations are vying for bragging rights — 6 below at Lutak, 13 below at ten-mile, 2 on Main Street. Klukwan and Mosquito Lake? You don’t want to know. It was 6 above on my car thermometer when I left for the pool, 3 degrees on Cemetery Hill and 2 in the pool parking lot. I had hoped it would really be the -8 or -10 or -12 below zero that was predicted, just to set a record. Add the north gales and we are in Antarctica.
I ended up ringing the bell for the Salvation Army again today, by accident. I was the back-up for the back-up who arrived late, but eventually. (My friends require a deep bench when they volunteer. Husbands, grandchildren, frozen car doors, dogs that won’t come inside and can’t be left outside in this cold, a physical therapy appointment, bread in the oven…you get the idea.)
I didn’t mind. Everyone in town, it seemed, was in a good mood. I was even hugged by Shane. But what the heck, it’s once a year, so I hugged him back. The poor man. It could ruin his cowboy reputation. I’m a total greenie, lefty, democrat no less. Christmas comes just once a year. Peace on earth, good will towards all.
Stopping by the pool at midday to drop off a pizza gift card for my favorite lifeguard, I saw Fred putting his boots on and he said, over the mayhem, he could tell school was out. There must have been 15 kids in the sauna with him. It was, he said, not a Zen moment. Not that the retired fuel company manager is a Buddhist or anything. Still, he was smiling. I said the brewery opens at noon, maybe I’ll head over there now, and he laughed. I wish I had. I want to be that much fun, but I didn’t, as Frost also wrote, sort of, I had miles to go before I could drink a beer.
Back home, I stirred the stew and chili, walked the dogs, stoked the stove and as sun set was about to write to you, when an old friend ( we have known each other a lifetime) walked in asking me to sample her rhubarb cordial…is it too sweet? Too strong? Well…
The great good news is that I wanted you to read this poem at the solstice, The Shortest Day, by Susan Cooper, but I couldn’t fit it in, but now, being of very good cheer—I give it to you—
It is in this beautiful book–
