The sun is hours from rising.  And snow is a silencing shroud upon my part of the world.  Shoppers will be out desperately trying to make up for being housebound by weather, because today will be the last chance before Christmas.  Normally, cars would already be flying past my window here; and one occasionally glides by on the snow-shushed road.

When a winter storm descends and night comes early and stays late ,as it does in winter this far north, the quiet becomes a very physical force.  It is the kind of quiet that does not enable sleep, but makes you anxiously awaken because it is unnatural in this modern hectic world.  It is the hush that takes you back centuries.  You feel as if nothing exists out in the darkness beyond your porch lights. You are the last person in the world.

You can turn on the lights, the television, music, and computers.  And still, the quiet seeps in through well sealing doors and windows.  In the pre-dawn hours, it is the existential time of utter isolation and, conversely, unity with all. The house sleeps around you— pets, mates, and offspring; and you find yourself somewhat too eager to hear their snores and breathing to assure yourself they are really there.  Because the darkness outdoors is so palpable and near to the windows.  Even if you don’t fear darkness, the quiet deep sort that Northern winter engenders makes you feel very small and alone.

The small loneliness is what ties you to so much else.  Every other person alone in the dark…ever.  Stories of prisoners rise up in your memory, tales of illness and patients tossing in hospital beds.  You can find yourself listening for sounds your world does not contain:  cathedral bells, the call to prayer that echoes down Mideastern streets, the lowing of cattle eager for milking, a baby’s cry of hunger, or tropical birds greeting a tropical sun.   But the reality ,of course, is the thud of ice trying to go down the gutter drain pipe, the darkness and cold that seeps into your bones and the unease of being the only one awake.

You compose the ‘to do’ list of the day.  Phone calls to make to relatives.  A trial at soap making.  Perhaps candle making?  Menu planning and inventory of cupboards to shop as soon as possible after the holidays end.  Filling the short daylight hours of winter is simple.  It is the long night, even now that the Solstice marked the increase of Light, that lingers and drags because you must keep the silence while others sleep.

It is keeping that silence in the darkness that ties you, you see, to the book of names and the spirals of stone buried in the snow.  The silence of the dead in the dead of winter night when the sun lingers elsewhere and your heart beat lags with longing.

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