OUT THE WINDOW

At long last snow -- not the sodden stuff that rearranged our Halloween last fall -- and turned off the power for four days -- but fluffy flakes that dance and swirl in gusts and trace tree limbs outside the glass.  One of my first acts on moving here some years ago was to remove a solid wooden side door that blocked the view, and install a pair of sliding glass doors that offer twelve feet of  view across the patio and ponds to the trees and birds and animal visitors in the woods and wetlands. It was an instant and wondrous transformation.  Perhaps the most important part of a house is how it frames the world outside -- what you see from your windows while you're snug and safe inside.

This week's New Yorker has a meditation by Donald Hall on window reverie. A living master poet of New England life, he still lives at Eagle Pond. It was once his grandparents' farm in Wilmot, New Hampshire, and I can picture it because of his own writing and that of his late wife, the poet Jane Kenyon. The New Yorker piece includes a image by an artist named Kikuo that beautifully captures the melancholy of age and infirmity -- as well as the solace of home and the natural world.

Gazing out his window, Hall observes, "After a life of loving the old, by natural law I turned old myself. " No longer a writer of poems, he is still a master of the essay, and his recall of earlier generations, of his own life and wife, of their illnesses (who could believe that he would survive cancer, while his wife, some 21 years younger, would not be cured?), of his loss and inevitable decline, of his view from 83-year-old eyes, is moving indeed. His watching and his reverie feel companionable on the page, and I am grateful for his words. 

Once, on a vacation in Ireland, I was struck by the view from the window in our room, and started a series of photographs of the view from each room we stopped in.  It became a habit, whenever I traveled, to record and later to recall these window views. It's exhilarating to wander out of doors, but it's also rewarding to sit quietly and observe the passing scene.

I watch the snow descend from trees in sparkling sheets. I watch the Carolina wrens pull peanuts from a feeder that hangs from an eave, then retreat as a sharp-billed downy woodpecker moves in.  At the sunflower feeder, which hangs on a wire that runs from house to maple tree down by the pond, there are chickadees and titmice and finches. The finches are dull brown now, but gradually in the spring their golden transformation begins -- is it coaxed out by the sun? More likely the golden feathers (on the males, mostly) are designed to make them more attractive mating candidates.  On the ground small armies of juncos glean and quarrel over spilled seed, then scatter as a large gray squirrel takes over.  Outside the window, the pecking order constantly repeats -- the bigger bodies and the sharper beaks prevail. The timid move aside -- sometimes meekly, often with a gesture of protest.

I mark the seasons with the breeds and colors of birds.  Like all bird lovers, I have made a pact with them -- I keep their feeders filled, and they reward me with their visits. The most miraculous are the pair of Carolinas who nest beneath the bridge that crosses the stream between the two ponds. Their plump bodies, their rich rusty feathers and their marvelous caramel breasts are delightful;  their purring trills are  Baroque arias that soothe me as I work. They are normally a southern bird, which may be why they hug the house in cold weather. 


All the birds are welcome companions. It is a pleasure to work so near the natural world. I tend to lose myself in my writing, and they help me keep in touch. When large numbers arrive, I look up and check the clock to learn it's time for lunch.

It will snow again tomorrow, the weather forecasters say. For lucky us, it's on the weekend (but how the schoolchildren will complain they have no "snowday"!)