a prelude for december

It's hard to believe we've very nearly reached the last month of the year. December! For Thanksgiving I've gone home to eastern Washington, and a truly amazing freezing fog crept in last night, leaving a thick coating that almost looked like snow on the ground. I sometimes forget, in the maritime temperate climate of Seattle, how beautiful winter can be. Or how dangerous. (I've not forgotten the cold. Cold is something you never forget.)

Six months ago I wrote stories about eternity. This month I am writing stories about changes. Autumn is of course usually the season of change, but by the time December rolls around I always feel like everything is in flux. You can't get the sunset to stay still, for instance, but even culturally. We move at a breakneck pace through the holiday season. After Thanksgiving it becomes the race for Christmas, and then Christmas comes and goes and you're left cleaning up the tinsel, just in time to ring in the new year--and the new year is a holiday all about changes.

Some of these stories I've been waiting to tell since I started this project, and some of them, of course, I'm making up as I go. Regardless, I hope, if it can't be warm where you are, it is at least beautiful.