180: sun set

I napped on the drive to Green Bay for this holiday season, which meant it was my turn to drive back to Minnesota. Me and that stick shift, we don't entirely get along, and though it's a bit easier now that there is a new clutch, the snow in the first bit of the drive kept me wobbling.

But all that anxiety can dissipate when one looks up at the sky. Ah, that crutch: seventy miles an hour and the tetchiness of me plus automatic, but the clouds kept shifting, kept swelling inside as they did out. The frosting knife remnants, the spatterings, the great bursts of strange orange-pink--the sky in perfection, the acrobatics that kept me moving.

Above, that's the results of something strange Ryan did with his camera phone. He has one of those gadget-y phones, the ones with a flat screen that involves a stylus, and I'm still trying to figure out how on earth one might call another phone from that darn thing. What happened to rotary phones? I miss them. You had to be really certain of a phone call at that time. Lots of bravery built up for calling the fifth grade boyfriend--many opportunities for hanging up and trying again.


All this is to say, here is what I can give you, despite my trotting down the highway, beneath several Amish wagons on the bridge above, and just below, several snowmobiles (all this to remind me of my place here in the Midwest, in case my wild rice slow cooker recipe last week was leading me to forget). It is the best I could do while driving, but I think the truth is this: that things like snowflakes and sunsets are impossible to photograph, not in the way we see them anyway, and no matter the rising anxiety at solid ice (our driveway!) or drifting snow, at stalling out or denying the smell of french fries across the car (damn impending resolutions!), these small beauties can smooth it over. This eased my breathing: the black silhouettes of trees against blue, blue sky, the three hawks in a row on treetops I spotted, and the dozens of wild turkeys pecking amongst the corn stalk stubs.

This, and daydreaming of a small hobby farm, learning to make cheese, of canning jam made from our raspberry bush, of double yolk eggs from chickens, of the garden sprawling out and flourishing from my wee worm deposits.

This, for you, our sunset: