I think the birds slept in this morning. I wanted to. Woke up at o-dark thirty to the house being shoved by a northerly gust. Cedar’s faith that it may just be worth having another day got me moving, as always. 

The woods seemed especially stingy with sound today. A raven croak here… An eagle ruckus there. And finally, as if begrudgingly, on the way back from our walk, the crazy mechanical stutter of a woodpecker (it must be more machine than animal) and one or two Swainson’s Thrush calls. I think Richard Nelson said something like they emit a “rainbow of sounds;” this morning maybe more like a frozen waterfall. 

It’s a good day to be on land. Even the ocean looks grouchy, old, almost Atlantic. As if it’s tired asserting its dominance over unprepared mariners. But on it goes. The mountains seem closer on these high pressure, northerly days. 

The Ted Hughes term, “blade light” (“the wind wielded blade-light”) has stuck with me since I first read “Wind” at age 21. The light this time of year in Juneau is the ultimate mood-altering drug. As sunsets move farther to the north, early evening light streams into our kitchen, and — while highlighting just how dirty the windows and floor are—always lifts me a bit from the humdrum. But this northerly stuff— high pressure system with less moisture in the air—is different. It’s like we’re all just a little more exposed in our places… the light and the air just a bit heavier or sharper. 

I’m sure I’m projecting all kinds of stuff on that blade light. Cold mornings with whitecaps on the Egegik and Naknek Rivers come to mind, bone rattling bouncing in jet-skiffs, and on the Egegik, surging through rolling waves in a helpfully waterlogged wooden skiff. I remember waking up to wind chimes at our friend’s place at Coverden here in Southeast, knowing we had stayed a day too long, taking our old Olympic (another waterlogged craft) home in waves that actually moved the house so that the door would no longer close right. Half way across Stephens Passage, we lost all of our electrical accessories. I decided not to tell either wide-eyed Katrina (who must have wondered why I wasn’t using the wipers) or 260-lb, Jordan who kept marveling at the fact that the waves weren’t swamping the outboard. 

So, yeah, I bring all kinds of baggage to a cold northerly morning that may shape into a beautiful day. Cedar greets the day a little differently.