Of seasons, part one.

I.
In the wintertime, in the Appalachian mountains, the sun comes crackling over snow covered peaks. So close one can hear the buzz of frost bitten excitement. Winter. I can see those mountains from my window. I sit really close with a blanket over my shoulders and my face turned toward the open air. Outside. The draft swirls and whirs about like a scratchy cloth, it wisps about my coffee-intertangling with the steam rising from the cup.

The cold is all encompassing, and I like how it holds me together. When you lift your face to the winter sun, the wind subsides, and the sun dedicates a single beam to your skin. Hold on to it, if you can. I squeeze the last ounces of heat out onto the table I prop my knees against.

The snow sparkles so bright that there's a film over the landscape and you can see everything- so clearly, and not at all. A mirage of sunlight and cold. These mountains have been my home since years past. I remember the calm glaze of summer. The paralyzing and cruel midday heat, respited only by the sweet and metallic crush of a dripping corona on the front porch.

I remember the way the streets were alight with anticipation for the fall of autumn, and I remember when the first leaf fell. The first, and the last as well. Yellow and glistening, too proud of their heritage and mountain back drop to be anything less than lasting. They fell into the December month. For weeks the sky has looked like a banana float, the yellow leaves swinging on the white mountain flats, so far behind them.

And I have left this place. But I remember the way the Blue Ridge responds to seasons. With vigor. With challenge. And with patience. And I can do the same.

It is not winter because one day, an old man looked at his calendar and saw it written so. It is winter because on that single morning, when I drank coffee in the frost of my window, my heart opened up and welcomed in a taste of the solstice sun. It is so because it is so, and not because anybody has said.

And above all, the seasons are miraculous for this. We may wait and we may yearn and we may hope. But the seasons wake up every day. Taking one day at a time. Until one day. Overnight. They change. It's gradual, but it's unforeseen. Magic, even.