It’s a day of markers: to the outside world, the Day of Kings, of the Magi, the Feast of the Epiphany; to us, two more hashmarks in the long history of grief.
It’s also, in bits way, the season’s primary line of demarcation: After a constant stream of holidays, once we gain this day’s other side, we at last get down to the business of winter.
Winter: The light is still low, angles short and sharp and shadows long. The dark still holds sway for more than half of each day, and there is yet much more cold ahead of us than behind us. If we are fortunate, much more snow awaits us, too.
Recent days have seemed remarkably warm, if only by comparison to the deep cold of three days past. The sun rides high in a sky still mostly blue, only thin veils of smoky white dancing across the western horizon. The light casts the spirits of this day in sharp relief upon the earth, shadows of winter yet to come.
As the world elsewhere goes up in flames, when pillars of smoke rise in the sunset sky like the heavens’ own warning, it becomes our obligation to appreciate the cold, to honor the ice and snow. It is difficult, at times, to keep gratitude firmly in mind; the kind of cold found in January at 7,500 feet is the sort that burrows deep into the bones and grinds aging joints to a halt. It burns skin even as it steals breath, that fire of ice that cauterizes as surely as any flame. And within it all lurks the lingering awareness that we are still not safe; the time of freezing temperatures grows shorter, while unseasonal warmth creeps in, beckoning the small birds off their migratory path and driving out those who thrive in the heaviest of snows.
Shadows.
Foreshadowing.
Yet shadows imply something already in the past, only a false image overlaid upon the future distance, while foreshadowing is a device that allows us to pretend that we do not know what awaits in this world we have built. In truth, there is a direct line between past and present and the future we can see, and humanity has laid it out deliberately, inch by inch, even as it now struggles to wipe away all traces.
But the shadows persist.
And this is the nature of the light: It follows us as surely as day follows night, inescapable, refusing to allow us the luxury of avoiding guilt or evading responsibility.
For us, more winter lies ahead; that is, for now, still indisputable. What is equally inarguable is that it is no longer enough. And so, like all of humanity now, we have work to do, repairs to make, promises to keep.
Because the shadows follow and precede us. They show us a world in need of winter yet to come. And they show us where, unlike these long and darkening shadows, our own acts have fallen short.
~ Aji
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