The Tree Lighting

2006-01-14T05:45:00.000-05:00

Snow is beautiful once again.

Having recovered from the big storm, I reminisce about last week's annual Christmas Tree lighting in town. We've been going for years. It does have a sort of magic about it, like this town itself.

There were the Madrigal singers in Renaissance Costume, Santa was atop of the town's Engine No. 1, and the Christmas Tree was across the street from where we waited for the magic moment.

Snow fell gently. It wasn't cold that night.

Shops on both sides of the street were open, offering free hot chocolate and food. Toddlers, children and teenagers roamed the main street, usually crowded with cars trying to maneuver in heavy traffic.

This annual affair is a microscopic view of my town itself. Architecturally beautiful, the town has many historical houses and monuments. In the early days, the town was a country retreat, reachable only by railroad train. The train station is in the center of town and also serves an underpass below, which connects three intersecting streets.

Visitors to my town often remark, "Oh, my, this is so beautiful. I'd really love to live here.

I especially used to hear that from co-workers who were in this part of the country from, say, California. The famous train station is still a train station, but now it serves commuters, rather than summer home visitors. An old, frame gazebo is across the street.

Up the street leading to the center is the small town Green or Common, with benches for sitting, flowers (in summer) and a time capsule to be opened in 2084, two hundred years after the town's founding.

Winslow Homer used to live in this town, when it was part of Cambridge.

But on the night of the town center Christmas Tree Lighting, even the usual 'hurry, hurry, hurry, rush, rush, honk, gotta get going', spirit of many a day had quieted. The usual raucous clamor of commerce was silenced. The street was blocked off to allow full pedestrian access.

Throngs of townspeople were out. Many exchanged greetings and seemed so excited to see each other again, as if they were meeting a long, lost friend. More likely, they had met up with each other at the market yesterday. It is a quiet, polite, trusting town.

This is very important.

We heard the madrigals, saw the elves giving out candy canes, heard the band, heard the DJ playing a lot of Frank Sinatra, and watched people move in and out of stores.

In this event, people talk to people they don't even know.

The town prides itself on maintaining its image as somewhere between the late century and the 1950s. So, as we stood there waiting for the tree lights to come on, I felt nostalgic for the spirit this event had stirred in me many times before.

The word was not yet on my tongue.

"Ah," the crowd cried out.

The lights went on. For not only did the lights of the Christmas Tree light up, but also so did all of the 19th century-fronted stores, which had hung carefully placed strings of white-bulb lights across the tops of the facade, looking like so many gingerbread houses at night.

It was then I remembered what I had been missing.

Suddenly, the world around us changed: we blinked and saw pixie dust before our eyes, and then we were forever transformed back into the world of our childhoods.

I can't wait until next year.

Copyright 2003, Randomedia, Kathryn Esplin
Copyright 2006, The Tree Lighting, Kathryn Esplin
The Tree Lighting

More on Snow

2006-01-14T05:41:00.000-05:00

So much for armchair musings about snow.

We decided to get a movie and some take-in. We could not back my car out of the driveway.

The plough that did the driveway next door piled the snow onto the hedge that divides the two properties. The passenger side of my car was wedged tightly into packed snow and the hedge. There was no backing out, only spinning on our wheels.

My husband was stuck in another state for two more days, but I knew we had enough money and basic supplies such as potatoes, eggs, bread, milk and juice to last us. Besides, I reasoned, I could walk to the bus and go to the grocery store from there.

My shovel-helpers removed the foot of snow from each car. The plough had come twice. Everything in the area was canceled.

Two-thirds of the school districts in the state canceled school today. But on Saturday and Sunday, I went out in search of food. I walked to the bus stop and continued walking in the direction of the store. A mile later, a bit cold and wet with 26 degrees Fahrenheit, which the weather map told me feels like 16 degrees with wind chill, I was still in good spirits, hale and hardy from my years up north.

I amused myself with memories of the 'good ole' college days, when storms like this took down a city of approximately 2 million people. For several days. During those times, my imagination would take me back to the lives of my grandparents - and the grandparents and great-grandparents of many.

Fuel or wood for the house, food for the fridge, candles, additional money, skiis nearby for transportation, in case all else failed. Nothing ever came to such drastic measure that we ever had to live such a rustic and harsh life as those in the 19th century, but such Nor'easter storms remind me of how lovely life is when everything works. I arrived at the store with wet feet and slightly frost-chilled fingers.

I bought enough for one paper shopping bag. This, I knew from college, was what I could easily manage to carry one mile by myself, winter or no. I began my walk home, with an amazingly small amount of supplies in that bag. Triage is a fact of life. I had walked, and slipped once, then continued walking. I had planned to take a bus, but I saw no buses during my 30-minute walk to or from the grocery store in the town next to mine.

A black sedan turned around from the opposite direction and slowed, pulling up to my side. Instinctively, I looked down and thought to myself: "I hope there isn't a man in that car." I live in a pleasant community.

A nice young woman offered me a ride, which I gladly accepted. She drove me the rest of the way home. We ate a hardy, basic meal and had a lot of fun together, playing board games, knowing that our 'other' life would return soon enough. I appreciate the simplicity of 'the good old days of log cabins, wood stoves and rustic, pristine beauty', but I appreciate it more when it doesn't interfere with my urban life.

I guess contemporary life has come to that. Our conveniences have become necessities.

Electricity, heat and everything which those two produce make contemporary life possible.

But even as good as the joys of electricity, media, computers, DVDs, music, CDs, and everything else not available one hundred years ago, I do feel we've lost an important sense: the essence of our soul in nature.

I still like snow, pixie dust, crystalline flakes but they are a romanticized view of what snow means.

Snow means nature dominates us. Nature never fails to remind us that it can overpower us with its beauty or its devastation.

Church services were cancelled, schools were cancelled, electronic registration was cancelled, the list is endless. The contemporary world, with all our conveniences, such as the one I'm currently using, gives up part of its soul.

Nothing can compare with the rough outdoors, live people, and person-to-person communication.

Copyright, Randomedia, Kathryn Esplin, 2003.
Copyright 2006 Kathryn Esplin, The Tree Lighting

On Snow

2006-01-14T05:23:00.000-05:00

It is 4:20 p.m. and the snow is beautiful.

All two feet of it, still on my car. Snow is my favorite season.

Really.

I love how it smells when it's fresh, how like powder it feels when you walk on it, how fun it is to shovel yourself out of your home. Making snow angels.

Hot chocolate for my shovel-helpers.

The plough does come to do the driveway, that part of the drive not already plugged by our cars; today, he's come twice already.You'll never hear me complain about Winter or Snow.

It's not cold here, there's really not much snow, so there's little to complain about, despite what they say about this region of the country. It is true I know of no one other than myself who holds a steadfast belief in the magic of our pleasant winters here, but there's a good reason.

I used to live up north, north of the border, in Canada, where it is colder than Moscow, Russia, my cousin says, and has a lot more snow. Snow brings back the pixie dust magic of when I was very small.

Snow has the comfy feeling we're all protected by a special blanket wrapped all around. There's no logic to it; it's just emotional truth.

Even an ice storm, so treacherous to drive, has a special magic, first thing in the morning.

When you see maple and sycamore branches barren of leaves but coated with three inches of ice, you know your humdrum, dreary day suddenly vanished, and you are a small child once more in the land of magic, pixie dust, ice crystals and happiness.

Copyright, 2003, Randomedia, Kathryn Esplin
Copyright 2006, Kathryn Esplin, The Tree Lighting