I know I’ve said this before, but I wish you could see the view out my window right now.  Winter has painted over New Hampshire’s fall canvas with a veil of white, and the town around me looks sleepy today, as if resigned to settling into its snowy slumber.

          Winter is peaceful here.  I was on the road yesterday during a storm and thinking of the odd dichotomy: to the drivers around me it was a driving nightmare, a slick mess, a disaster waiting to happen.  Snow was dumping on us, as tho’ purposely trying to make our day difficult just to spite us.  But a quick sideways glance into the woods told a different story, and showed the true nature of yesterday’s snowfall.  Among the trees the snow drifted down lazily, filtering softly to the ground, and clinging to the exposed branches of the stately old patriarch trees and lapping around the lower reaches of the precocious saplings.  It was beyond idyllic ~ it was a flashback.  When I was a kid I loved to put on my snow suit and just lay in the silent woods, watching the snow fall straight down toward my wind-kissed nose. I would contemplate existence… well, at least to the extent that a six-year-old boy could; you know, the usual stuff: toys are cool, girls are icky, I can’t feel my nose, etc, etc, etc. That memory flashed as a strange juxtaposition between the idylls of a young Yankee boy and the manic, white-knuckled tension of adults making frantic attempts to power their way thro’ God’s enveloping white hug. 

          Ya know, I’ve thought a lot about what I could have done if I had stayed in the military.  As soon as I got back from Afghanistan, I longed to go back to the war. I tried several times, but they wouldn’t send me either back to Afghanistan or Iraq, so I got out.  There is still the residual twinge, craving excitement, craving actions that will cement my place in history, toppling tyrants, just like in my heady old days in the mine fields.  But honestly, I’m pretty sure that’s not who I am anymore.  No, I’m definitely a new feller, someone who would be more happy throwing on an old plaid flannel shirt, donning my snow gear, and laying out in the back yard for a few hours watching the snow falling straight on my nose.  I remain convinced that, if the tyrants of the world had spent their childhoods laying in snowy fields contemplating existence, and becoming one with a pile of snow, they wouldn’t have been such old poos.

          Sigh… I suppose I should get some work done now…