(Pandemic Diary - day 292)

From my journal: 15 December 2020 (Tuesday)

We’ve used the hot tub on our back deck [at our vacation rental in Canaan] every night since Hellgate [100km trail race], and it’s been perfect. Tonight it was especially surreal, though, and if I combine last night and tonight, I could paint a memorable, 2020-worthy picture.

There’s a vacant lot next to ours, an edge place for the ski resort where they’ve apparently been dumping leftover wood. Last night they started burning a big pile of it, and they continued it tonight.

It’s not a small fire. The pile is at least 20 feet across, and the flames were shooting at least 20 feet into the air last night, almost as high tonight. There’s about 100 feet between the fire and our rental, there’s a good covering of snow, and last night at least, there wasn’t much wind, so though it was scary, like footage from the California wildfires or something, I think there wasn’t much danger of it leaping the property line and burning us down.

Tonight, on the other hand, it’s very windy, and at times there were sparks flying our direction. That’s where it becomes surreal.

We were sitting in the hot tub. It was dark, it was about 20F, the wind was gusting, every so often bringing a barrage of icy shrapnel from the branches of nearby trees. And along with the ice, there were sparks and ashes from the flaring fire next door, the flames dancing into the sky on the wind. And we’re sitting there in the hot water, our hair frozen, our bodies near scalding, looking up at Orion hanging in the clear sky above the fire.

Add the steam rising from the water, whipped around our heads and dispersed into the wind, add the smell of smoke, add the sound of the wind and the sound of the ice breaking away from the branches, and you have a sensory overload in the making. And it was of beautiful.

We’re back inside now, warm and cozy by the fireplace, but the wind is still loud outside and the ice is still battering the side of the house from time to time. It’s about midnight now, time to go to bed and maybe listen to it some more, and hopefully to drift quickly into sleep.

And maybe also to think about how to construe this as a metaphor for the year… this beautiful but hostile world, fire/ice/wind, stars overhead, cuddling against the darkness…

Maybe.