This morning, a full moon shone down on the front porch between the tops of the towering spruce trees across the creek. With all the snow, the glow was enough that I didn’t need a headlamp to make my way to the outhouse around the back of the cabin in the woods. Nor did I need one last night, navigating the bridge across the creek in the dark at the end of a long day in town.
The snow has stayed with us so far, although the ground is still soft and this weekend is threatening warmer temperatures and the possibility of rain. I have been here a week, and although the heady giddiness of the first few days has worn off to a degree I am still feeling wrapped in a contentment and peacefulness that has not faded.
There is only spotty cell service at the cabin. Texts can get through, but voice calls and data are out of the question. After ten years with Peter as a near constant presence, I find myself struggling to become used to being alone again. Struggling to be content with my own company, my own projects, my own silence. Home in the late afternoon, I split some wood, play fetch with the puppy, make dinner and read into the dark. I fight the urge to text whoever I can think of in the evenings for some kind of company. I find myself succumbing to sleep by nine, wanting to write or read (or study!) more but unable to gather the focus or energy in the dark, warm cocoon of woodstove and blankets and snow. Which makes for early mornings, Ersta nosing my face before dawn, my own body waking reluctantly into the cool darkness left after the woodstove burnt out hours before, the blue glow of moonlight outlining the few furnishings of the cabin through the windows as I peek out from under a pile of blankets.
Not every day has been picture perfect. There has been miscommunication and conflict about my work schedule with my old boss, notorious for his absent minded, yes-man management style. There has been a disorganized scramble to complete paperwork, background checks and training get into the hospital to precept students. There have been questions and no straightforward answers (which is causing no small degree of stress for me) about what I can and cannot do as an instructor while nationally registered but unlicensed to practice medicine in the state. There has been a week of near-misses trying to communicate with Jodi about running dogs, as she is out on the trails and in the dog yard as long as it is daylight – the only time I am in town with a decent cell signal. There was the bittersweet sting of driving to our home to meet the new tenants, flooded with memories all the way down the road, up the driveway and into the house. I stood with the tenants at the picture window as they told me about the resident moose family and watching the northern lights in the yard. Watched the sun set together through the trees as a red fox paced her slow way across the yard, hunting voles under the snow. I drove away and cried.
All this made for a day of mild, sustained panic on Wednesday, as each of these little things came piling on and smothered the general mood of come-what-may-I’m-so-happy-to-be-here that I had been riding high on for a week. It made for an exhausting day. The low-frequency tone of missing Peter that I was growing used to suddenly reverberated through everything and I nearly broke down on the phone with him, without being able to articulate why. I began to question this whole endeavor, wondering if it was a huge mistake to come here after all, to uproot everything and try to be home again for awhile in a place that cares nothing for me despite my obsession with it. I felt I couldn’t complain to anyone, because I am so fortunate that everything has worked out so well and so far. And it has. And ultimately, I knew days like this would come, days of questioning myself deeply. But I rode it out as best I could, coming back to the cabin that night with my tail tucked between my legs. I found some solace, or at least distraction, in a Wendall Berry book tucked up on a shelf and woke up the next morning a little more ready to face whatever challenges this path will bring.
A little. I know there will still be bad days, confrontations, frustrations and miscommunication. But I also know I can ride it out, and that being here is a gift to be relished every day, even the hard ones, even the ones that leave me questioning everything. I have to keep before me the reality that these next weeks and months are mine to shape, and ultimately it is on me to make of them what I need and want. It is easy to blame these swings of mood and purpose on the phase of the moon, a little harder to go outside in the moonlight and walk in the snow and relish it for what it is, deliberately turning away from all the doubt and fear and second-guessing that rears its head in the dark. A little harder, but so much more worthwhile.
entelechyproject 