Day 3, Friday, Leap Year Day, February 29

tonight i realized that from where i sit, i'm directly facing the tree we call our "grandmother pine." a constant companion from across the yard.

snow falling. very quiet. noticed a ringing in my ears. is it always there, like my mother's?

tonight i was attentive to the human community around me. watched my mother, visiting, walking through our house with my little son. the two of them alone together in the warm, lit house, an island of coziness in the big dark world. heard neighbors shout from down the street. heard my husband come home, watched him enter the house. and out in the yard, the edge of a small forest and a small field, was just the being of the world. no "activity", nothing "doing" anything, just snow falling and the trees and the earth, the sleeping animals and birds, the dormant insects and plants, the silent night creatures, and me out there to be with them.

thought of how many of the trees that live around our house are in the path of a road people are planning to dig into the land soon. my grief for the trees, my understanding of why the folks have planned their destruction. the empy skies that will be there in their absence. tonight i felt that all of that does not exist. right now, the trees live. right now, they stand there, the birds are taking refuge in them from tonight's new snow, the chickadees love their favorite seed-cracking branches in them, the trees hold their darkness against the city-lit clouds. right now, they stand there, where they chose to stand to live this life. what does it do for them, to them, when i sit and contemplate them being taken down? right now they stand.