A few years ago, I decided to maintain a journal of nature observations. After writing every entry, I would read Edwin Way Teale’s daily reflection from his “Walk through the Year”, furthering my profound respect for him and my understanding of New England’s unpredictable climate. It’s a daunting task –some days there’s so much to record – new flowers, new birds, and sometimes there’s only the weather. I started with the morning’s first view from the window, continuing to record what I witnessed there throughout the rest of the year. There’s a social media site “View from My Window” where people from all over the country and the world share a perspective with which they probably never spent so much time. I encourage others to join. It’s just another way to unite us. And to appreciate the view from ours. And I encourage you to write, not only of this experience, as I know many are, but also of the beauty you observe in this time of time and of patience. And of spring. On my birthday, Teale’s entry states: “The great gift of our lives is the gift of awareness”. I might not have many talents, yet I’m glad I’ve never neglected to make the most of that one.

Our bedroom window frames the winter morning; it is always the first view. The mountain laurel branch reaches across the glass, choleric leaves curled against the cold, casting interesting sketches on the white canvas. Beyond, there is snow as far as the eye can see. It starts at the sill, pours forth, a smooth surface of dunes, as a desert, extends all the way to the stonewall, with the bluish shadows of trees lengthening, shortening, lengthening, disappearing, darker shadows of crows crossing, and occasional colorful feathers threading my vision, scratching the silence. The trees are rimed with frost, snow settles in crevices, across horizontal branches, dusts the barren limbs of shrubs. The field beyond the stonewall is a white sea, to the rows of tree trunks of far-away oaks, another field seen between their dark trunks to distant maples, their thickly twigged statures obscuring the view beyond, as impenetrable as later leaves; the difference is color – they are charcoal now. The snow will slowly melt, revealing first the stonewall, the earth surrounding the trunks of trees, southern slopes, the evergreen leaves of azaleas, the separate stones of paths, and lastly, the icy chunks underscoring the stonewall where the sun is last to reach. All will become the subtle gray green of early spring. In another few weeks, the crocuses will sprinkle the soil underlining the window, and the robins will return to the barren branches of the crab apple that serve as a frame for the view of spring: the daffodil “Sweetness” forms a fringe along the window sill, while tete-a-tete narcissus descend the lawn that stretches, increasingly emerald, to the stonewall, a greening pasture beyond. Early leaves like jewels ripen along the gray branches of the trees – burgundy on the crab apple, sage on the ash, the pale green of the oaks, spears first, then crinkled leaves slowly unfurling, and in the distant meadow, the nearer trunks of oaks stripe the billowy rows of the maples’ rust and chartreuse. Next to come alive, the arch of the crabapple branch, its leaves maroon as they emerge, and then its flowers, rose colored buds that open to wine petals, framing another crab apple, dark buds opening apple-blossom pink, and the azaleas – first the sparkle of a woodland white, then the flounce of mauve, the paler version, the grape purple, the magenta, the sumptuous rose, and lastly the pale pink. Purple iris rise from the garden visible from the window and spears of deep blue lupine, and pastel columbines float on invisible stems. Then the window’s favorite season — the mountain laurels between them, so as not to inhibit the view, become the view as they flower, a few of their branches reaching across the panes with pale pink pillows opening to palest pink tea cups; and the peonies, fragrant, floating bowls of sherbet, powder puffs of pink, peach, apricot, cream, rose, their ruffled faces at the window’s rim, perfuming the room. Pale and plum purple clematis climb the arbor in the garden, and the indigo spires of veronica mirror the gazing ball that sits on a stone pedestal at its center, later becoming ringed with the violet blossoms of stokesia. Then the lilies start to burst along the window sill: trumpets of yellow and gold, of butterscotch and pumpkin, of ivory and scarlet. And in the garden, phlox – white and pink, pink with white centers and white with pink centers, candy cane colors, purplish, magenta, rose, shell pink, bubble gum pink, baby pink — intertwine with the lavender spires of obedient plant as the beauty berry becomes jeweled with clusters of violet florets. In late summer, Joe Pye weed rises five feet, intermingled with the limbs of the mountain laurel, and in the fall, the garden fills with asters – the wild blue asters like pale wisps of lavender clouds billow around the gazing ball, and behind them, a taller row of pink and purple New England asters swap seeds for their magnificent display of cascading branches of blooms, and a curve of sedum “Autumn Joy” in its kaleidoscope of pinks skirts the garden’s rim as the trees begin to ignite – first the russet frame of the crabapple, then the orange fire of the ash tree beyond, then the zelkhova, a coppery pyramid, and lastly the golden flame of the maple. With the leaves creating a carpet rather than a canopy, the berries visible from the window are revealed — the cranberry fruit of the crabapples, the scarlet berries of a holly, the amethyst clusters of the callicarpa — and the birds they beckon. November’s gray brings mornings and afternoons of cement, with only the horizons flushed with color in the sun’s risings and settings. Only the stubble of gardens is left, only the skeletons of trees and shrubs, the lanterns, the chairs, the wind chimes, then they, too, hibernate, leaving only the view of the weather. The gray view of the gray weather to the gray stonewall: empty birdhouses, empty benches. All is barren until the first snow falls, initially dusting the trees and the stonewall, then painting them, the gray rocks coated, the evergreens frosted, tier over tier, a smooth sea of white, pure and unmarked at first, then pricked and criss-crossed with the travels of wildlife, later piling against the tree trunks to the split of their limbs, burying benches and shrubs, hurling along the stone wall to consume it entirely so it resembles a white wave cresting, everything white, framed with the window’s frost and icicles. And then the slow melt. The leaching of white, inch after inch, the return of gray, lichened and mossed, waiting for the paint strokes of birds and flowers. No one, in all probability, would ever paint this scene framed by this window, and yet it is the picture that speaks to me first every morning. It is a part of my heart.

Dayna McDermott