Return to Alewife

What if you had an Advent calendar, the traditional kind, and you decided not to open one of the little windows? Just left it sealed. Moved on to the 16th. Kind of perverse, right? Might drive kids in your family crazy, even if they knew it probably concealed something obvious, like a candy cane or a drum. But still.

Well, that's what I did today, or didn't do. I was biking near the Alewife Reservation, en route to getting Matt a CD for Hanukkah (Magical Mystery Tour). And I decided to pay a return visit to the bird box that inspired this whole small-a advent hunt. The bird box whose lid I raised to reveal a sleeping field mouse a couple of Decembers ago.

Since that time, Alewife has been landscaped, to its benefit. Trails established, wetlands protected, new marshes encouraged. More of a wet meadow. Less of a hobo jungle. (But still also an industrial park.) I didn't see the original bird box, but I found another pair of boxes sharing the same pole among the scrub. I leaned my bike against a post and ventured in. The box I approached was just a bit too high to allow a good peep-in. I looked around for a boulder, something to stand on. Nothing. I considered my bike. Too unstable. I reassessed. If I left the box alone, I'd avoid waking up a sleeping mouse, and possibly rendering its abode too dangerous to stay in. Or I'd avoid being disappointed at seeing no mouse at all. Two commendable avoidances.

So I let sleeping mice or no-mice lie. Returned to my bike and was rewarded by a hoarse cronk of a great blue heron, likewise unseen. I rode on through the industrial park, whose cranes were the unfeathered variety. Around to the upland forest of silver maples and wetland, maybe Little Pond. Heard the thin whinny of a downy woodpecker, unseen as well. It was mild for mid-December, the sun falling to its last hour, and I felt a closer bond to the month than any day so far. This is my place, it seemed to be saying with a shy pride. Not a beautiful place, but home. The brown drab weedy mien I'd disparaged weeks ago now seemed only appropriate. No need to gussy it up with lights or cover it up with snow. The truth is, December is about sleeping. Sleeping field mice, dormant trees and plants on hiatus. So, pipers piping and drummers drumming: salute the ebb, the 4:12 freefall. Light candles if you wish, but the winnowing of December, at least the one in these latitudes, calls for darkness and suspension.
G'night.

Last ember

Funny how the words have come to sound and look like their months. September suggests a fresh lined yellow pad of paper. October is all rounded and open, like a pumpkin with nothing to hide. November has those dark consonants, the color of brown wet leaves. And December has the icy c: a cold tinselly sound.

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Hard to get to know the real December. No other month is so dominated by one of its days, maybe because that day is near the end of the month that ends the year, so Christmas exerts a gravitational pull on December even stronger than the one Halloween has on October or Thanksgiving on November.

There's one way of slowing down that cascade of days. December has its own calendar. LIttle paper windows to open each day of the month until Christmas, usually revealing things like angels, toys, wreaths, ornaments. We even had one once when I was a kid. I remember it hanging in our kitchen, an exotic item in a Jewish household, but I enjoyed those little daily revelations.

One December first, a few years ago, I was wandering through the meadowy acreage of Alewife Brook reservation. Came upon a bird box, one of several put up to attract bluebirds. On a whim, I reached up, opened the hinged wooden lid and peeked inside. There lay a little field mouse, fast asleep. Of course there would be! I quickly reclosed the lid. And it occurred to me later that what I had here was the first opening of a natural advent calendar. One could fill all the days of the month (or any other month) with such unexpected revelations, ones that shed light on the other December. Or just passed the time interestingly.

So let's try it. Here's the first opening, an easy choice: the full moon. It's actually full in about four hours, on December second, but close enough for jazz. I didn't expect it and there it was, no longer the scary guy it used to be, but an entertaining, burning cold, movie using borrowed light. What to call it? Usually December's moon is the Cold Moon, but this December has two full moons. I suppose the second one, on the 31st, will be called the Cold Blue Moon.

And here's a runner-up, a word I discovered this morning, in a preface by Christopher Morley describing Sherlock Holmes. He was, Morley said, an infracaninophile. Any guesses?

Time's up. A champion of the underdog. (Of course it would be!)