December Journal by Luanne Armstrong

December Journal:

And I suppose, also, the end of this year’s journal, typed to a background of an utterly confused and confusing blare of noise from Copenhagen. Only two writers have made any sense of it so far for me, Michael M’Gonigle, writing in the Tyee, and George Monbiot writing in the Guardian. Other than that, the mainstream media is as silly about Copenhagen as it was about H1N1.
It was a good year for me, if not for the planet. My house is full of food from the abundant garden, the chimney is clean, the wood is dry, the house is warm, small things that make a world of difference. And despite the environmental degradation in the world, we see more animals and birds around here, not less. Wolves were here one afternoon, above us on the mountain, howling on their way through from somewhere to somewhere else. A cougar tracked through the pasture. Then the other day my brother came in with a hunk of grey hair. Something had broken the bottom two strands of barbed wire in the north fence and left a chunk of hair behind. We looked at it mystified; not deer, not moose, not anything we knew. The next morning, he came back, gleeful. “A grizzly,” he announced. Not everyone would be thrilled at the sign of such large predators around but we are glad at this sign of a functioning and intact ecosystem.

Partly it is because there are fewer hunters and fewer people here in the winter; driving along the lake road means driving by many huge and shuttered houses. Even the few people that still live year round tend to go away for large chunks of the winter. Even so, many of the house still sport large yard lights and outdoor lights. From my house, at night, in a landscape that was once pristinely dark, I can now see three sets of yard lights. I have no idea what purpose these lights achieve; they burn all night and every night, (one is on an empty house) when I look out, they irritate me like an itch I can’t scratch.
But mostly the farm is quiet; the pigs are gone. The empty pigpen is oddly sad. The garden is asleep under the snow. The greenhouse is shut down. A few birds eat dried Saskatoon berries and rose hips. Flickers occasionally come to drill my house-logs for dinner. An eagle goes by on its way to harass the coots but the ravens don’t chase it as they usually do.
Walking is an experience of black and white and grey stark beauty, grey water sloshing restlessly under the wind, black rocks, black trees, snow layered on every surface. It’s a great time to look for tracks, for the record of the busy restless life that still continues all around me.

And it’s the social time of the year for me as well, and conversely, also the quiet time; time to write, to think, to walk. When I arrived in Vancouver ten years ago, I arrived on the verge of Y2K, and a great chorus of confusion of what might happen. Nothing did, partly because a great many technical people spent a lot of time and money making sure it wouldn’t. But now that the world stands, again, facing a great historical turning point, there is, yet again, great confusion. Despite the many apocalyptic voices around, no one really believes that disaster will come – not yet. Just as people partied in Paris while German troops were marching towards them, and the radio went on announcing that all was well, so we drive and shop and live our lives. I do it as well. I loathe the pressure this time of year to shop but I like the part that is about friends, family, connection, community, making music and art together, catching up after a too busy summer and fall.
Christmas, solstice, the turning of the year, the time when there is still abundance left from harvest, when the freezer, the cupboards, the canning jars, the dried fruits, the boxes of huts and onions and garlic are still here. The hungry time of the year is still to come. No wonder Christmas is a festival of life and Easter is a festival of death. Traditionally, Easter would have come at a time when the cupboard was empty and the garden not grown.

But all is well at Kootenay Lake. I write and listen to the radio and read and study.

And I listen and wait. And while I do that, I plan the next garden.

***