There’s a new bareness out in the landscape. I drive down streets that in summer hold heavy foliage and that in the early part of winter still manage to hold the winter straggler leafs that hide the yards and homes. Now they’re all gone. It is bare. There are glimpses into other people’s lives that are seen at no other time of the year.
When the sun shines, just beginning to warm toward spring, there’s a clarity. And on clear nights there’s clarity of another kind – not only of stars and moon but of scenes like the one out my back window. A neighbor down the way has a deck light on. I’ve never once seen that deck. Not in daylight or darkness.
I’ve talked before about how we sit on the edge of the city, the last house before the freeway that sits below the yard like a deep, noisy trench. We’re not on one of those city streets that have well defined blocks – partially because of the freeway and partially because we’re in suburbia. There are no sidewalks. The back yards of my neighbors face the back yards of the folks behind them.
In the inner city neighborhood of my youth there’d be an alley in between. And sidewalks clearly defining the one rectangle that was our block. There’s no alley here. Where my neighbors face neighbors, that’s where my woods and the path to my cabin begin.
We’re in the fullness of winter and the emptying of winter, both at the same time. We turn inward out of necessity. Icicles hang from the eaves.
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