Carillon
It’s fifteen past the hour and a handful of tiny trills emanates from the gingerbread structure down the hill. I’m close enough to appreciate the delicate wooden scrollwork framing the tower but far enough the splinters aren’t visible.
It’s snowing and it’s the kind you imagine when you think of Christmas. It falls without interference from the wind - if you drew the flight path from cloud to ground, it would be at the gentlest of angles. Snow sticks to others of its kind gathered in piles along the sidewalk but disappears instantly onto the black road. When I catch a flake, heat I didn’t know my fingertips possessed dissolves it into a single clear droplet.
“There is me, there is falling water, there is warmth, there is chill, there is music, and there is very, very little else. ”
The bells ring again. It’s half past.
It has been like this for four days. The sky is the kind of grey that presses without oppression. It’s the atmosphere laying a gentle hand on my shoulder in the quiet of a church and saying rest here. I haven’t missed the sun because this is the bright kind of grey that underscores the difference between snow and rain.
Were the temperature to rise by even two degrees, the sky would instead be pressing a thumb on the precise part of me that finds it difficult to get out of bed. It would be the devil saying see? It’s better when you leave the door closed. But the snow says oh, wonder. Every pile of flakes reflects even tiny amounts of ambient light so there’s a glow bright enough to pierce my veil of self-centeredness. It’s not much, just a few centimeters, but it’s enough to make me smile.
Once more, the tinkles of the bells match the rhythm of the sky’s product. It’s quarter till.
I’m in a round pool that’s melting the flakes in their final foot of descent. There’s leftover blood reddening my cheeks from the warm water that’s heightened my internal temperature. Unlike running in the rain, I welcome the sparks of cold that ping on the surface of my shoulders.
The bells do their work once more. But at the top of the hour there’s a surprise in store.
An entire song vibrates through the snowstorm. It’s tinny and electronic, a facsimile of the German town-square song that it’s meant to evoke, but for two minutes there’s music in a sky full of dampening agents. There is me, there is a pool of water, there is falling water, there is warmth, there is chill, there is music, and there is very, very little else.
The trees bow under the white weight collected on their branches but they aren’t lowering themselves out of sadness. Instead, they are saying look, let me show you my topside. Let me get a little closer to the earth I came from. It’s a standing ovation to the marking of the hour but inverted; a bow to the work of humans that created these sounds and to Mother Nature with her magician’s wand whirling a vortex of softness.
When the song’s notes have quieted, I wave to the trees and gesture theatrically at the carillon in appreciation for its fine performance. Then I catch another flake just as it disappears into liquid.
The second half of winter is here and it is marvelous in only the way it can be.
Inspired by events in
Ketchum, Idaho.
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