One feeling we all have in the valley is that when February comes, spring is just over the hill. "Well, it's a short month," we say. "Won't be long now." Actually February is twenty-eight days, except for an extra one in leap year, and that isn't much shorter than the months with thirty days. It adds up to forty-eight hours less. but as far as we are concerned, February isn't really long because of those two days. Which makes me realize what a mystery "time" is. We live by it generally: It marks our comings and goings. It regulates the pattern of our days. But what is time, really? We move back an hour in fall and ahead an hour in spring, but where do those hours go? They are not like stones dropped in a bottomless well. They are, presumably. sixty minutes more or less according to our clocks. But nature has her own time, which is even more mysterious. Sometimes grass is greening early, sometimes late. April may be the end of winter or a beginning of spring. forces man cannot understand operate our rhythm of the seasons. And in the country, we follow nature's time even in planting the early peas. We set a date for a party and may have to postpone it a week because of a storm. Oscar Lovdal begins haying when nature's calendar says the hay is ripe for cutting. In another area, our own clocks are useless. We all live through days that are as endless as if the earth had stopped turning. I have had a number of days during which grief erased all sense of the passing of the hours. Then there are days as short as a love lyric-the sun seems to be setting before last night's moonlight has dimmed. Sorrow stops the clocks, and happiness sends them spinning like meteors. But in our society we all watch the clock nevertheless. There are clocks in almost every room in the house, and practically everyone wears a wrist watch. Radio and television announce the time hour after hour, to be sure we know exactly what it is. I sometimes wish we had only sundials, for most sundials are inscribed, "I only mark the hours that shine." Pret himself has a large collection of priceless clocks, all different, all in working order, scattered throughout the house. Each has its own music when it strikes, and since they do not all strike at the same second, it seems as if they are talking to one another. A good many lifetimes have been measured by these clocks and I wish I knew about them all. The modern electric clocks are not as romantic but are independent as long as the current is one. During a nor'easter or an ice storm, they suddenly stop, the hands motionless as if frozen. It gives me a strange feeling to go through the house and see time standing still, and habit is so strong that I look at every one in every room. If someone has remembered to wind the ancient ones. they keep ticking, but usually I have let them run down-even the one that goes thirty hours. It reminds me, as many things do, that with all our expanding technocracy, we are not as independent as the early settlers. We even lack water when the pump stops working. The stove and the refrigerator and the furnace go off; the lights won't turn on. Push-button living is easy when all goes well. When the power fails, as it sometimes does even in summer, we do not know how to manage.
At the farm we light the fire on the great hearth and bring out the oil lamps and find the candles, and I may say the house is never lovelier than when lighted by firelight and candlelight. We can cook over the hearth fire and use the chafing dish, and we can use canned heat for the old coffeepot. but during the longest blackout this winter, i sat up tending the fire until two in the morning. The next day I talked with a friend in the next town, which was not affected. Her remark was classic. "I don't see why you sat
up all night," she said. Country Chronicle
One aspect of life that interests me most is that it is never the same day after day. A friend once said, "Life is so daily," and although I cherish that statement, I find every day has something new to observe or feel. Even when I am snowbound I look out the window, and the birds play out a drama against the falling snow that is never quite like the one during the last storm. And there are always new footprints on the snow, some familiar, like those of the skunks, who leave a special track where the tail drags, and some others that are impossible to identify. Shadows on the snow are never exactly the same as yesterday's. And no two fires in the great fireplace are duplicates. Perhaps the only constant thing in life is change. Country Chronicle
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We have two antique
clocks at Stillmeadow, one a steeple clock and one a shelf clock that has come down in the
family for generations. A third is stored in my closet, because there is no extra mantle
for it to rest on. My friend Pret Barker, who collects old clocks and is a
researcher, tells me it was one of the very early ones made in Connecticut. I remember it
at my grandfather's in West Springfield, Massachusetts, where it was repaired in 1906. It
winds with a big key and operates by weights and actually has an alarm. It strikes the
hours with a mellow tone.
