January 2, 2024

It’s dusk and I am walking along the dirt road that skirts around Berlin Pond. A mix of frozen mud and gravel crunch beneath my steps, keeping time with my unhurried pace. New ice on the water, dull and opaque, comes alive, creaking and cracking against the brush on the shore. I flush a pair of birds in the thicket, one of which flashes a bright orange crown and calls ti-ti-ti in agitation at my approach. (Lucky day! I identify a new-to-me bird for my life list: the golden-crowned kinglet.) The dome of the sky fades up from the dark horizon hills: naples yellow, sienna, violet, ultramarine, linen. Yet for all this vista’s enchantment, beyond the frame of my reflection a few hundred yards back, the roar of interstate highway traffic disturbs me like a howling gale on a sleepless night. I struggle to settle down into the landscape and my awareness. I waver between worlds, tripping on the threshold that divides my attention in two. No matter – today I take what I can get and keep moving.