Seeing the holidays in the rear-view mirror is not unlike getting over a virulent stomach bug. The relief of simply getting back to normal is so satisfying as to be positively transformative in nature. The gratitude, the deep contentment, the blissful solitude – it’s possible that I have just gained a whole new lease on life.

Our dogs have come out of hiding and are sound asleep - sprawled across the living room floor. Happiness for them is found in the simple things as well. Like being able to nap wherever they want, knowing their humans will step over them and not on them - like well-intended, but accident-prone children and house guests sometimes do.

Our chickens who, as a matter of course, consider any sudden movement or unexplained noise an existential threat – did not, in fact, weep to see our beloved grandchildren leave. Perhaps as life returns to normal and the hens realize it was just the end of the year and not the end of the world, they’ll start laying again. Perhaps…

Our sheep, who are not unlike the chickens - or me, find comfort and contentment in the quietly mundane. Life for them is good once again – simply because everything is as it should be. Everything is back to normal.

Our pigs, who are accustomed to a daily cornucopia of hay, day old bagels, acorns, and a variety of fruits and vegetables - were fed nothing but dry pig food for the entire holiday week. They have been boisterously unhappy with the menu, and there is nothing quite as unfestive, or as threatening, as an unhappy pig. I brought them acorns and apples today, they’ll have squash and pears once again tomorrow and depending on what next week brings - I just might be forgiven by spring.

For Anne and me, the departure of our house guests has been like opening presents all over again as we rediscover all the misplaced objects and the things we put away “somewhere” for safe keeping. Look! I found the bread knife and oh! There’s my favorite coffee mug!!

Tranquility washes back over me today, as I bask in the silence and can write quietly, once again, in my favorite chair - my reading glasses, and cup of coffee right beside me-exactly where I left them…

Heading out the door to do chores this morning though, my heart felt an awful tug. I sorely miss that little hand reaching up for mine. I miss his happy chatter and gentle laughter. I miss the chance to see the world again, vicariously through his eyes. To explore and discover all the wonder that there is to be found in all the things I now just take for granted. I miss him mightily - but for a few more days at least, I’ll still have the cold he gave me, and for now that’ll do.

There are few things on this planet as peaceful as walking in a New England forest after a snowstorm. The sound deadening blanket covering the earth creates a blissful silence and is the perfect tonic for an overly noisy world. The welcomed hush is broken only by the gentle rustle of leaves stubbornly clinging to a few outlying trees.

Most deciduous trees drop their leaves as soon as the color fades in Autumn. But a few, like white oak and beech trees, are “marcescent” and hold on to their dead leaves through the winter. Researchers have yet to agree on why these trees do this. Some theorize that marcescent leaves provide a fresh layer of mulch in the spring when the trees need it most. Some think the retained leaves offer shelter for birds, which in turn fertilize the ground below them. Some think the unappetizingly dead leaves help protect the tasty new buds from being eaten by browsing herbivores. I’ve often thought that the leaves were just left there for me to enjoy, like muted wind chimes on a wintry day.

Curiously though, and perhaps revealingly so, is that the majority of marcescent leaves are within twenty feet of the ground. A white oak tree which might be eighty feet tall, will only retain the leaves on its lower branches. If the purpose of marcescence is to provide a layer of mulch, or shelter for the birds, surely retaining the upper leaves would be useful as well.

The fact that the only leaves retained are ones within reach of passing herbivores lends credence to the theory that it’s a form of protection from grazing. To discourage our contemporary white-tailed deer, the twenty-foot cut off point is definitely overkill, but oak and beech trees evolved for millions of years in the company of giant sloths and mastodons. In fact, back when beavers were the size of bears (about 10,000 years ago), your average run of the mill herbivore could easily have grazed from the gutters of a two-story home.

The only things that kept those super-sized grazers from consuming the entire planet were the equally impressive hypercarnivores that hunted them. Despite today’s allure, I seriously doubt I’d find my meandering wintertime stroll so relaxing if I had to share the forest with saber tooth tigers, American cheetahs, and dire wolves. Perhaps the true purpose of the marcescent leaves is to serve as a reminder that though the modern world might seem loud and at times stressful, at least I can aspire to be something more than just an appetizer in the food chain of life.

I always thought my mom’s tradition of putting an orange in the bottom of everyone’s stocking was a waste of perfectly usable stocking space, and I told her so every Christmas. She explained that growing up oranges were a special treat, and as a child, one of the magical joys of Christmas. As a kid I found that hard to believe, but it makes sense to me now. In an era before refrigeration and mass transportation, everyone ate locally. You knew your farmer, and you ate what was in season, and I can certainly imagine how exciting something as exotic as an orange, grown in a faraway place by total strangers would be to a small child. I’ll likely never know the thrill of such “exotic” food, as now everything is shipped everywhere and available any time of year. Probably the closest I could come to that kind of culinary thrill is tasting something that is just absurdly expensive.

On one of the first Christmases that I spent away from home, my mom sent me a small package, labeled very clearly “not to be opened until Christmas morning”. I should have known what it was, but it was small enough, and light enough, that I didn’t think about it, I just stuck it in the bottom of my backpack as a friend and I headed out to hike the Kalalau Trail on the Na Pali coast of Kauai.

The hike was strenuous but the views and the beach at the end of that hike were absolutely stunning. A mile of pristine sandy beach nestled between the ocean and the cliffs of the Kalalau Valley. The place was completely deserted except for a couple we could see setting up their tent at the far end of the beach.

It was a surreal spot for a New Englander to spend Christmas eve. I fell asleep on the beach, under the stars, to the sound of a 300-foot waterfall thundering into the ocean below.

I awoke, just before dawn on Christmas morning, when the unnerving sound of waves coming in way too close and way too fast, pierced my consciousness. We quickly moved to the elevated safety of the dunes and waited for sunrise.

As the sun came up, we could see that the couple down the beach had not been so lucky. They lost everything to that rogue wave. It had swept them away while they were zipped up and sound asleep inside their tent. They managed to get out of their tent and swim to shore but lost everything they had brought with them. They were completely traumatized, but very happy to be alive.

The four of us walked the beach trying to retrieve anything we could find in the roiling surf. We recovered a tent pole, a hiking boot, and a couple random things, but there was actually very little the ocean was willing to give up. At some point we stopped looking, sat down, and with a deep sense of gratitude for just being alive, we wished each other a Merry Christmas...

We eventually left the couple there on the beach - shoe-less, and still wearing their wet pajamas- promising to contact the park ranger as soon as we got back to our car, so that a helicopter would be sent in to air lift them out. Before we left, though, I opened the package from my mom. My “Christmas Orange” looked pathetic, alone in that box, with no stocking, wrapping paper, or gifts to keep it company - but split four ways, that orange tasted every bit as exotic, as my mom had always claimed them to be

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15,000 years ago, our farm (and the rest of New England) was covered with a sheet of ice a mile thick. As the glacier receded, it left behind barren rock, glacial till and valleys filled with lakes. The surface of New England had been scrubbed clean of whatever topsoil, earthworms, and megafauna that had lived here before. We had to completely start over from scratch.

Lichen recolonized the rock – while shrubs and moss grew along the shores of the glacial lakes that were left behind. Grasses filled in quickly (glacially speaking) creating a treeless tundra populated by ancient horses, dire wolves, giant beaver, camels, and migrating herds of mastodons, and wooly mammoths. The grass followed the melting ice and rain, and the grazing animals followed the grass. Small bands of nomadic humans followed them both, across the Bering Strait and into the Americas.

Within a few thousand years, Paleo-Americans were encamped on the Farmington River. The river provided an abundance of water and an assortment of fish, and the Metacomet Ridge (upon which Anne and I built our home) was the perfect elevated vantage point from which to spot the dust clouds that alerted hunters to the arrival of migrating herds. Around10,000 years ago, those ice age animals became extinct and were replaced by the more familiar caribou, white tailed deer, moose, bear and elk.

While we were building our barn on the ridge, I found a spear point which the State Archaeologist said was 4,000-6,000 years old. It’s in perfect shape, and I often wonder how it came to be left behind. Unlike Anne’s spate of missing sunglasses, I doubt it was simply misplaced or left on the hood of a car. It was most likely lost during a hunt or buried, with ceremony, alongside its rightful owner.

Heading out to feed the animals this morning, there was a dense fog blanketing the valley below. The fog followed the course and the bend of the Farmington River, from north to south and back up north again. As I watched from the ridge, the fog dissipated as the sun rose, and I was reminded of the glacier in retreat, and of how much has come and gone since then. From barren rock to fertile soils, from dire wolves to the paleo point I held in my hand. There’s an odd sense of serenity in knowing that we humans are but a tiny blip on this planet’s timeline, and that ultimately, she’ll be just fine without us. She has, in fact, moved on and started over, plenty of times before. All she needs is a little bit of lichen - and a whole lot of time.