Thinking Through Winter

I have a strong affection for winter, for its short days and low sun. I do not like the Central California summer, which is relentless.

During the week this time of year, I am at the office well before sunrise. The building is quiet, and if the lights are still on from the day before, I switch off all that I can before sitting in my cubicle.

A couple of weeks ago I spent two nights in a tent in Yosemite Valley's Camp 4. I set my tent on the snow, rigged up a warm mattress constructed of an old sleeping bag and a leaky Thermarest. For a couple of days I hiked around the Valley and enjoyed fresh air, tired legs, and the post-Christmas respite from all things ordinary. I got to see a wild bobcat for the first time, as well as a healthy coyote and several deer. The last time I was in Yosemite was in September, when I sometimes enjoyed a strenuous backpacking trip that, a few days in, found me unable to either eat or sleep enough to maintain a normal level of energy.

The day before yesterday I drove up to the mountains and spent several hours of skiing in the backcountry. I encountered nobody, and I had the trees to myself. At several points I stopped to enjoy the falling snow. 

For about the last month I have had my evenings and weekends to do pretty much as I please: no classes to teach or take, no students to call, no papers to grade. In a couple of weeks I once again start teaching: two nights a week, two hours a night. I am trying to gird my mental self for the increased activity, but the thought of 30 students staring up from their seats causes me no small amount of anxiety.

I will also be taking a guitar class, basically the same course I took last semester but am allowed to repeat at least a few times. I am not a good guitar player, nor will I ever be. But I am better than I once was, and being a student again will help me (I hope) be a better teacher. Many of my students are afraid of writing, really, just as I am afraid of playing my guitar in class. I am hopeful that I am developing a bit of empathy for those who truly do fear having to write. For one Christmas when I was a kid, I asked for a guitar, and what showed up on Christmas morning was a cheap plastic thing that I treasured. Mike, an older neighbor who would end up having quite the dark side, once offered to sell me his electric guitar for $100. I balked, one of many decisions that I have regretted. If I'd started playing then, even with this fat, meaty hands I'd be a much better player than I am.

For Christmas this year I asked for and received a box of Blackwing 602 pencils and a new Rhodia notebook, requests that befuddled more than one person. With these pencils and in this notebook I have begun writing the newest tome (mentioned in in a not-so-old blog post), an exercise in futility and creativity that I'm hopeful to make habitual.

I have told my students for many years that they, too, must practice their writing, that it will get easier and they will get better if they just stick with it, no matter how fat and meaty their hands are.