For the Christmas holiday, I journeyed north to downeast Maine. The photographs above have already become reminiscences of that time, now that we are closer to February and December has quickly turned into a memory. But I have been remiss in sharing the details of what was a wonderful time with my mother in the small, coastal town where she lives, tucked away in the woods by Flat bay. For four days in a row we lost power due to an unrelenting ice storm, but our wood stove kept us warm and my mother's resourcefulness kept us contented. When the sun set at 3:30PM, giving our world over to darkness, we lit our tapered candles and took turns reading from Laura Ingalls Wilder's The Long Winter, which seemed an appropriate amusement for us given the circumstances. During daytime the color of gray ruled the skies and the sound of snapping trees filled the woods. I played with our dog Jethro on the ice that covered the land on our tidal bay, waiting for the day when the sky would turn blue.
And it did, exactly when it should have-on the morning of Christmas day.