Snow?
Snow, indeed! My wife, Melissa, and I woke to a gray December dawn and the sight of the season’s first snow falling upon the Quansoo plain. Soon Ingrid and Huck, our youngest two children, awoke. They were delighted, as I knew they would be. In a few minutes, they had bundled up and stepped outside. The children joined Melissa and our dog, Bloo, for a jaunt in the snow before Zoom-school began.
The snow arrived as an unexpected, and most pleasant, surprise. I find that winter offers the Island at its most beautiful. The sunsets are the most striking. The angled sunlight floods the empty woods with a clear light. The Quansoo oaks reveal their magnificent form in silhouette. Clear nights invite bracing walks to the sea, guided only by the light of the moon or of the constellations. All of these scenes, however, are loveliest when blanketed with snow.
What made the snow especially welcome is that we could take a moment or two to savor it. Ordinarily, by 7:00 am, we would have already dashed out the door and been rumbling up the Quansoo Road to meet the school bus. For the snow, the children would have but pined, with noses pressed against the car windows. Yet because of the pandemic, on this snow day they were in Zoom-school, at home. They therefore had no bus to catch, and no rush, and the leisure time in the morning to start the day with a snowy romp.
We near the end of a challenging year, a year that will be forever defined by a worldwide pandemic. The pandemic has been deadly and difficult. People have lost loved ones and have fallen gravely ill. Families have endured enforced separation. Workers have lost jobs. Businesses have lost money. Stores and restaurants have closed. Travel plans have been canceled. Traditions have been cast aside.
Despite this, I have found that there have been bright spots. The renewed love of the outdoors has been one of these. One of the joys of living at Quansoo is watching people walk or bicycle along the perimeter trail. I have never seen this trail as busy as it has been over the past year. Since March, the trailhead has regularly filled to capacity, and the trail has enjoyed the happy footsteps of those out for a ramble beside Black Point Pond. We have seen this interest in walking continue unabated at all of the Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation properties across the Island. In fact, at the annual Rally of the Land Trust Alliance, land trusts across the nation universally reported significantly higher levels of use of their lands.
While we may tire of meetings on Zoom, and long for the better communication, and the handshake and backslap and bonhomie of an in-person meeting, the virtual meeting has shown its benefits. We have been given the gift of time, in time saved by not driving to and from meetings, in time saved by not needing to sit in a town hall meeting room waiting for one’s chance to speak. And despite the pandemic—rather, because of the pandemic—I have found time for family togetherness. I never thought that, aside from perhaps a day or two at Christmas, I would find all of my children at home again. Yet for two months in the spring, and again now in December, all four of our children are here, and we are a family again. We find time for dinner together and dominoes and board games. We have time for conversation. And during the time that we were apart, because of what we learned about virtual meetings by necessity, we held our own family calls via Zoom. We could have done this years before, but never would have thought to do so. I think that such virtual family gatherings will continue, long after we are all vaccinated and the pandemic has subsided, and we have all moved on to wherever life has led us.
Solstice nears. The sun rises just over the osprey pole, and sets over the copse of oaks. The sun makes its daily path across the sky at its lowest arc. Daylight is fleeting; the night is long. Yet just after solstice, each day is a little longer than the previous one. And on the horizon, there is hope. Soon the Martha’s Vineyard hospital will receive the first doses of vaccine. Slowly, the threat will subside, and slowly, life will return to normal.
Until then, though, I resolve to savor the blessings of this era. Yesterday was a Sunday, and—because of the pandemic—we had no afternoon or evening commitments at all. The day before, we had purchased a roast beef at the grocery store. I turned our oven on, sprinkled salt and pepper on the roast, and put it in the oven. I mixed up a bowl of Yorkshire pudding batter.
“Why are you making Christmas dinner, Dad?” asked more than one of my children. “It’s not Christmas yet.”
“Why not?” I replied. “Here we all are.”
By sunset, the roast was ready. We sat at the table, all six of us. Three candles glowed on the Advent wreath. The carol “In the Bleak Midwinter,” sung by the chorus of the Academy of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields played in the background, followed by a succession of other carols. And for no particular reason, we dined on roast beef and Cabernet Sauvignon by candlelight. To Melissa, I whispered, “This is joy.”
In this darkest of months, in this darkest of years, I hope that we find, and savor, every moment of light and joy that we can: a bracing hike, the Geminid meteor shower, a surprise snowfall, a spontaneous family feast.
– Adam R. Moore, December 10, 2020