It is like looking through a glass darkly. It is like using tinted glasses on this February day. It is like a landscape seen through the unwashed window of a slow-moving train travelling by the water’s edge. It is like desolation in a minor key.
I am sitting on a bench at a municipal picnic table which is covered in a light dusting of snow. The dog, a German Shepherd imported from France, is lying on the ground in front of me. We are both tired after a long walk through the trail. We are both staring out across the bay, face to face with a lonely landscape lit by the pale light of a wintry sky.
I can see on the far side of the water, to the left and to the right, a fringe of pine trees like curtains in a theatre pulled back to reveal a dimly lit stage on which nothing is happening. Oddly enough, the reflection of the trees in the water is clearer in this bleak light than the actual trees. The sea, near where I am sitting, has frozen around three small rocks that protrude above the surface. There is no movement on the water.
I listen to the silence, or what appears to be silence. A seagull shrieks in the distance and there is, intermittently, the gentle sough of the wind through the trees, the cries and whispers of nature. From time to time I hear the sounds of ice cracking as the insistent tide moves in slowly. The snow begins to fall, a few light flakes landing on the frozen sea, the ground, this picnic table, the dog, and on me.
Were I a philosopher, or a rural clergyman in an island parish, I might be filled with fear and trembling and contemplate the sickness unto death as I observe this bleak scene. But I am not. Confronted by the either-or of soul or body, life or death, light or dark, I assume the persona of a watcher on the shore until the dog stirs announcing it is time to go. She has had enough of this chill vigil and wants to return to the peace and security of her bed in front of a log fire. I don’t blame her. I also prepare myself for the long trek home. But we stay a moment, caught in this winter light.
