Today’s accompanying tune: “Here Comes the Sun” by The Beatles
The little blue house is tucked away in a clearing made long ago at the hands of the loggers who visited this hill before the families moved in. The gently sloping land is ringed by old growth stumps, matriarchs long gone, a testament to the fact that this clearing isn’t natural, that the clear sky above the little blue house that allows us to access the internet was planned, albeit unlikely with the explicit intent of our modern-day purpose. In summer, the little blue house is artfully hidden among the shrubs and trees, the leafy green abundance of peak season keeping its secrets closely held, lives tucked away into a clearing frequented only by the few who know of its existence.
The forest constituting the majority of the property continues Eastward from the clearing, the dense stands of Douglas fir and alder stretching down towards the stream carrying runoff from the hill on which this particular cluster of houses sit. In winter, the thinned canopy invites the thinner light of the low-angled sun, its weak rays only just able to push through the barren boughs and into the meadow as the day begins. For a few hours a day, on the clearest of days, the sun makes it inside, warming the little blue house’s joints so that they creak and groan, adjusting from their dormancy of the cold, wet winter, stretching longingly into the promise of warmth.
That all changed a few weeks ago, when the clocks sprung forward and the sun stayed put. Overnight, the weak rays of the sun gained strength impossible to ignore. They swept over the meadow, drenching the grasses and shrubs and trees in energy, in light. All that was living responded — trees flowered, shrubs bloomed, grasses reached their hesitant blades towards the sky. The rabbits emerged, as did the flying insects so eager to start their short lives, exuberant as they danced in the early morning rays. Mounds of elk scat emerged among the tufts of grass, evidence of the herd’s habitual tendency to overnight in the clearing. The dew glistens on the newly emerging buds, catching the strengthening light just so, making anyone in its vicinity believe in the existence of magic, just for a moment, just so.
The creaks and groans of the little blue house are daily now that the sun emerges with enough regularity in the early hours of the day, the warmth descending on the moisture collected on the asphalt shingles with enough force to cause the root to exhale in big, billowing breaths. Ice still forms on the deck most nights, the clear overnight skies inviting in the cooler temperatures that were so absent this winter. The house, with its walls comprised almost entirely of windows, cools, too, our warm bodies only insulating the nest of the bedroom, leaving the rest of the heat and humidity to dissipate into the bottomless sky after a day well-lived. The sun, with its newfound strength, pokes through the still thin canopy to the east, reaching hungrily towards the east-facing windows where we stand, waiting, to receive it. Like the plants of the clearing, we tilt, angle, and jostle our bodies to best absorb the light, the energy, the warmth. It is an unwelcome reminder of how difficult a job we assigned to the UV lamps we trotted out in the darkest days of December, their artificial glow thoroughly unmatched by the presence of a star. We’d done our best to manufacture warmth, light, energy, when the sun was unable to gather its strength; now, there was no denying any substitute would suffice, not fully.
The energy is palpable, a restlessness descending upon the clearing and its inhabitants as swiftly as the warming day. The light creeps in earlier each morning, rousing the dogs minutes before the previous day. They wake with excitement and energy, eager to start another day marked by the rotating sun beams in the little blue house, perfect for napping in. They pounce and play in the still-green grass, coating their fur in moss and dew as they roll and shake. The birds are all we hear, tucked into our clearing far from the road, their springtime chatter a raucous roar to which we haven’t yet become accustomed. The light lingers later each evening, painting the sky with bursts of orange, pink, red, as it slips into the Pacific Ocean to our west. What was once an easy tiptoe into sleep has become resistant, the light spurring on the energy of possibility, of day still unspent. Inviting doesn’t capture the energy of the forest, of the late, slanting light of the newly buoyant evenings. It is beckoning, enchanting. Another moment of magic, just so. The forest, so quiet, so dark, has become alive, has awoken. All it asks is that we heed its calls, accept its magic. Walk with it, hand-in-hand, in the waning light of the day, the energy refreshed and renewed for another season. We ask it to stay, this magic, this energy. We know it can’t, that it won’t. It is needed elsewhere, and we know well the curse of too much of a good thing. The relentlessness of a sun unwilling to relinquish its hold, the way bleached land curves in on itself in a futile attempt to protect what little it retains. The sun is always eager in its energy, in its light. It takes as much as it gives as we tilt, angle, and shimmy ourselves toward and away from it. It can show us how to live, how to light the way. It can reach into the far corners and breathe into them vigor, hope. In its magic, is promise. A promise to use it wisely, to never overdo it. To remember the winter from which we’ve emerged, and the long road of summer ahead.
The air is still cool as the rising warmer air displaces that from higher elevations where snow will remain well into June. The sun has not yet cemented its control, its domain. It is here as a welcome guest, a long-sought reunion, a burst of much-needed energy. It alights the nooks and crannies, the corners left to accumulate tumbleweeds of dog hair and the windows smudged with nose prints. It bathes the understory in light, the most it will get until next spring, as the leaves grow, fueled by the light, and again blanket the ferns, moss, and lichen in cool, damp darkness. That which went unseen, now visible.
The question hangs stagnantly in the air — how did I let it get that bad?
Or rather, what else is waiting to turn towards the light? What will I find? What has been waiting for me to notice, to see?
Here’s to a little light and a burst of energy when it’s needed most.
- Megan