Snowshoeing at Twilight

     It was late , twilight, when I went out snowshoeing today. The landscape,  with its soft shadows and shaded hues was especially lovely. I made several tracks across smooth white snow before I stopped to take in the magnificence of the trees all about me. They stood  perfectly still, not even  the slightest breeze brushing their piney branches. All was  quiet, peaceful,  not a sound could be heard, except my own breathing in and out.  I couldn't seem to move, like I was  locked in place,   as though the silence held me captive. My thoughts slowly  shifted from the challenges of my day to something more lofty and grand. A prayer of thanksgiving escaped my lips, grateful for God's creation so wonderfully displayed in nature 

A Ray of Light

 A ray  of sunlight
breaks  through the
cold, gray sky
to shine on
snow-covered trees,
the frozen ground,
and bird in flight;
Bringing  hope 
for the morrow
before  dark of night

January 27

The cold of winter
with its icy roads and
snow covered ground,
and colorless days 
of muted gray 
no longer seems
like the welcome
visitor one is 
happy to see,
but a tiresome quest
who has exhausted
her stay

The Turntable

i sit alone
(my husband has gone to bed)
and listen to music;
Favorite vinyl albums
played on a Pioneer
turntable from the
late 1970's
Considered an antique
to youth of today,
for me a sweet
gem from long 
ago yesterday -
the  familiar sound  of 
Peter, Paul and Mary,
Neil Diamond, and
The Carpenter's
make me smile
remembering those
days gone by

January Days

My beautiful north Idaho
even in January
with its cold , winter days
and the earth and trees
covered in snow
lifts my soul
to praise  God's  grandeur 
and splendor of 
nature in every season
and all ways

Victor Hugo & the Musical Les Miserables

    Yesterday was a grey, snowy day in north Idaho. A good day for staying in the house to read, write letters  or go to a movie.  My friend Patty and I chose the later. We met in town at noon -   the weather didn't seem to bother the many folks  milling about, most  in  coats, many  with the identifiable North Face logo,  and colorful scarfs and knit hat. Patty and I  looked the same, all bundled up  when we  walked into Riverstone Theater to see  Les Miserables., the much talked about movie musical adapted from the stage and based on Victor Hugo's timeless novel of the same name. It was a  perfect movie to see on a cold January day. I would say  a near perfect movie in every way, to see  any day.

    This movie was wonderfully cast - from Anne Hathaway's Fantaine and hearing her sing the  hauntingly lovely I Dreamed a Dream to Samantha Bank's Eponine to Daniel Huttlestone as the child Gavroche.

    While some critics bemoaned the singing voices of Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe, I thought their voices were strong and steady, filled with just the right emotion, and  natural for the way  Jean Valjean and Javert might sound. Listening to Valjean (Jackman) prayerfully sing

God on high
hear my prayer
In my need you have always been there

He is young
He's afraid
Let him rest
Heaven blessed
Bring him home,
Bring him home,
Bring him home

 was only one of many times   I was moved to tears and  held out my left  hand for Patty to give me a tissue to wipe my eyes.  I thought of all the sons, including my own, and the fathers and mothers who passionately pray that same kind of prayer when their child has gone through struggles or in harms way.

    After learning his friends - the friends he  talked and laughed with, dreamed dreams with and were so full of hope   have all been killed , Marius (portrayed by the charming Eddie Redmayne) touches our hearts with his sad, lilting voice when he sings these lines from Empty Chairs, Empty Tables 

That I live, and you are gone.
There's a grief that can't be spoken.
There's a pain that goes on and on

and we think of our friends, the ones we laugh and talk with - so very dear to us.

    On the inside cover of the Broadway album   from 1986 is written, Les Miserables is a great blazing pageant of life and death at the barricades of political and social revolution in Victor Hugo's nineteenth century France. Yes.  But  also  so much more than that, as  Hugo himself wrote in his letter to M. Daelli, publisher of the Italian translation of LM

    "YOU ARE RIGHT, SIR, WHEN you tell that Les Miserables  is written for all nations. I do not know whether it will be read by all, but I wrote it for all. It is addressed to England as well to Spain, to Italy as well as to France, to Germany as well as to Ireland, to Republics which have slaves as well as to Empires which have serfs. Social problems overstep frontiers. The sores of the human race, those great sores which cover the globe, do not halt at the red or blue lines traced upon the map. In every place where man is ignorant and despairing, in every place where woman is sold for bread, wherever the child suffers for lack of the book which should instruct him and the hearth which should warm him, the book of Les Miserables knocks at the door and says: "Open to me, I come for you."

    It is a story of love, and loss, of sin and redemption, of hope and  moral courage; A story of friendship and faith.  Never give up. Press on. Hold to the high road. Choose the better part. Freedom .

    The blending of Hugo's novel with lyrics of Herbert Kretzmer and music by Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg is brilliant, elevating  the tale of Jean Valjean and his question  Who Am I  to new heights.

SNOW

White and fluffy and soft, 
i  first think  of cotton
falling from the sky; 
 Then of prisms
 that  glisten in the light
covering the field  
like a blanket
on a king-size bed,  and
draping evergreens in
 winter cold.  Snow.

NEW YEAR'S DAY 2013

 For me, New Year's Day  2013 starts   with  homemade huckleberry pancakes and basted eggs breakfast,  the Rose Parade and college football games, then  quiet moments sitting  in front of the fire resting and relaxing,  reading Flannery O'Connor,  and Russell Janney's Miracle of the Bells. Gary and I play Cribbage, and watch deer just outside the window as they nibble at each other's muzzle.

It's cold and grey outside, the trees  flocked with snow, but this day, like every New Year's Day brings a feeling of excitement;  An anticipation something fresh and beautiful lays ahead. It allows us to shed the mistakes and missteps of the past year, and a freedom  to renew the failed resolutions we didn't quite meet in 2012. To strive again to be more generous and kind; to forgive. To lift the spirit of family and friend. To hold a hand, to understand.

How many of us don't long for peace in our families, communities, our nation; our world? With this  first day of the new year, I have hope  peace, and love  can be found.