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the gifts were finished, most on time. the boxes of peppermint bark and bags of cookies were delivered to neighbors. big boxes went into the mail. and the tangelos we didn't have time to eat came with us to upstate new york, in a large tote bag that also contained 2 sandwiches with pesto and the last of the russian tea cakes that kept calling our names. a plane connection in atlanta and another in detroit, where we saw the first of what we were in for... deep, deep drifts of white snow. for the first time in many years we headed north for the holidays, trading louisiana's shorts and flip flops for down jackets and tall boots.


mr. d's family lives on a farm in a tiny community upstate, and in between all of the holiday things he + i took some long, long hikes around the farm, through the fields and the woods. i thought that i had learned something about winter last year, but i realized as i stepped, sometimes misjudging the ground and landing in snow up to my knee, that i knew nothing about snow, nothing about this whiteness, this quiet, this shimmering soft blanket. we stood amongst the beech trees and watched them sway gently back and forth, each branch a clear ink line in the gray sky. the sounds were: wind. our crunching footsteps. the water in the half-frozen creek. cardinals and bluejays. once, a group of turkeys, and then dogs barking that had heard them as well. we followed the tracks of rabbits and deer, spotting both track-makers in the trees. i felt so many times on our walks that my heart was full to bursting... that i understood with my whole self, for the first time, a little bit about loving winter.




and then our days upstate were over, and we were stuffed full of many many more kinds of cookies, and we came on a bus across the mountains back home to brooklyn. and right now it does feel like home, with mr. d nearby, and the sweet familiarity of this place. this week we are at-home vacationing in new york, and i am so happy about it. i will be back this week with more stories and photos from upstate, and maybe a bit from here as well.


but i'm thinking, you know, that this might be my last post of the year. and so i would like to say thank you-- thank you so much, for kind and generous and funny comments, for emails, for being out there this year, and for being part of this amazing little community. and i hope that your new year rocks.