in trees

A week ago, I was in Edmonton, spending time with my family there. The kids in the tree are as alive as children can be, eager to walk, run, lead the way along the trail to the Muttart Conservatory, to the bus that crossed the river on the low level bridge, to walk back and forth between their house and the suite we were staying in a few blocks away. They were skeptical when I said I liked magpies. They made beaded lizards, a gingerbread house, had a sleepover with us during which we went for a starry walk in their leafy neighbourhood before bed, and had their mum’s waffles with strawberry sauce the next morning.

And they had colds, coughs, which meant I’ve spent the last week recovering from my own. It’s a small price to pay for their company.

On the starry walk, the elms were quiet, holding the magpie nests safe in the darkness. In the ravine at the end of the street, porcupines and coyotes went about their nightly business. Some houses were strung with Christmas lights, some had pumpkins still on their cold steps, and Jupiter shone in the south-eastern sky. A waxing moon drifted from one tree to the next. I thought of a poem by William Carlos Williams, “Winter Trees”, and how sometimes words are exactly right for the occasion.

All the complicated details
of the attiring and
the disattiring are completed!
A liquid moon
moves gently among
the long branches.
Thus having prepared their buds
against a sure winter
the wise trees
stand sleeping in the cold.

Our woods are too dark to walk in at night, the trails narrow, a flashlight not much help. In summer we sometimes go for owl walks, calling for them as the light falls, and sometimes they call back. But this time of year, it’s true, “the wise trees/stand sleeping in the cold”, and maybe that’s good advice for us too.