Dusk

It's sunset and there is a pale winter-orange glow over the ice-tipped trees that line the stream on the border of the hayfield. My dog and I walked along the bank this afternoon, crunching through parchment thin sheets of ice that coated the grass. This is a place where winter looks like something out of Norman Rockwell's imagination. Icicles hang from the roof of the barn in tight, regimented rows and when the sunlight hits the trees, you'd swear they were wrapped in Christmas lights.

In the past few minutes, Jupiter and Venus have taken over the western sky and it won't be long before Orion sneaks out of the forest to the east. In the midst of all this, it's almost hard to believe there is still about a hundred thousand without power tonight. And it wasn't a blizzard like the big one of whenever -- it was just a day's worth of freezing rain.

It's easy to forget how vulnerable we are. Most of the time we function in that happy state of denial where light is only a switch away. We have conditioned ourselves to instant and constant contact through email and the cell phone. But add twenty or so hours of ice to the mix and we're scrambling for candles and hoping we've got enough wood on the pile to last until the power returns. Life gets really simple at times like that and maybe therein lies the real blessing, the reminder that ultimately, just getting through the storm is accomplishment enough.