No moon at 3 AM but twinkly stars and lawns covered in white, the failing charge of the solar-powered footpath lights made a weak ghostly hue. Had to look up “what to do about itchy scalp” and wondered, could it be fungus? Gate lice is what the airlines call people who queue by the gate before it’s time to board. Sat by an 82-year-old Quaker named Virginia connecting in Frankfurt from Mumbai. Couldn’t complain about being tired; she’d flown 10 hours already. Said we should let Lily study abroad in Jordan next year even if we’re afraid (“let her spread her wings and fly”).

After nearly a month away our cat Timmy looks older, regards me with dim interest and zero sentiment. With the dog it’s a different story. And after being awake 24 hours I slot right back into chores, bagging dog poop and straightening picture frames.

Of the walks I do back home the Rock Meadow one gets the most open sky and pastoral views, equestrian properties with stables and land for grazing, mansions with acres of sprawling lawn. Dawn grew up near here in the 80s a few miles from where we live now, when the whole area was called Issaquah, much of it horse farms and forest. I take this walk when it’s too dark to walk in the woods at the state park, and use my night vision to navigate.

I didn’t want to read about how old clocks worked or watch videos on it. I stood there manually restarting it each time it stopped. It was like a heartbeat. Not a cuckoo clock but similar, with two brass figures on top and a third holding a small blue globe like an offering, something written in Latin. The figure that swung from the pendulum looked like a game piece from Monopoly, the race horse. Timmy liked to stick his paw in the slot to stop the horse from swinging and now the clock wouldn’t run. A cuckoo clock would use cast iron pine cones as weights; this one’s looked like brass pears or oversized testicles, perfect for a cat.

I sat on the edge of the cold wood stove by the clock resigned to wait until the top of the hour (5 AM) to leave for a walk. And I took in the living room from that new angle: all the rich details of our home. Imperfect and perfect.

Outside felt as exotic as being in Germany in the predawn dark. My favorite part of the walk was right around the corner from our house, that stretch of very tall trees that lines either side of the road. Someone was burning something sweet that smelled like cherry pipe tobacco. Some of the houses still had white Christmas lights draped on the porches, made to look like icicles. Porch lights lit the snow-covered lawns for a milky halo that stretched a span and then faded. Regardless of how you felt about that much wealth it did keep the population density down and made for nice morning walks with lots of sky and no one around.

It was so cold and dark surely the horses were bedded down in the stables with their hay and wool blankets. And that reminded me of the first floor at mom’s house where they’d bring the livestock in over the winter and maybe even bed down with them in extreme conditions to keep warm.

About an hour before sunrise is when the sky starts to light with the first smear of pink and pale yellow. And then it fans out above until it reaches the end and the clouds look ribbed, cotton ball white. I go to the end of the cul de sac and double back. It smells of hay and vague manure, the light still dim. This is as exotic as any medieval village, the trickle of snow runoff in a drain, a distant jet. Some of those clouds were beginning to turn green and blue and by the way they swirled they looked like the beginning of a gaseous planet.

Stayed up until 8 PM though I napped once, and in the morning Dawn said look it’s snowed again, you could tell by the trees though it was still dark, and the sky looked the same as the ground, all the trees in between sugar coated, fairytale sweet.

Categories: Creative Nonfiction, Diary, Memoir

Tags: Creative Nonfiction, inspiration, journal writing, pacific northwest, prose