Relax to the max: rumination on vacation

Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year are three of four of our national holidays established in 1870, along with Independence Day. Christmas and New Year both fall on a Wednesday this year, which will make life interesting for a couple of weeks, with students excused from classes and businesses operating on holiday hours.

Oh and happy Thanksgiving, belated, good tidings to all in the days and nights coming, especially during holidays and celebrations. Christmas is coming up fast. Lots to do, oh, lots to do. Has everything been arranged? Is all in place? Down the corn stalks and harvest a young conifer tree or resurrect a facsimile from the basement like me.

Decorating and undecorating will be a continual process unto and through the New Year, till straggling adornments have hung so auld long syne that neighbors begin to call in wellness checks.

Old Man Winter came in on the heels of November and revived the northern Midwest’s annual, first-snow derby out on various county roads and state highways. All wordplay aslide, ‘tis the season for an abundance of caution on Midwestern roadways.

This is the time for all such talk—where are the flurries and drifts? A sudden shift has taken place under an arctic current, high overhead. Out come caps, beanies, muffs and Carhartts ‘gainst an high-altitude, low-pressure front. Keeping busy outdoors becomes necessary to stay warm—to keep one’s blood flowing.

A walk through a cold wind can bring on a mental sharpness, for a time. This is a game of diminishing returns, of course, and reading those returns carefully is the key to knowing when to return one’s body to shelter.

Edicts of the freezing season bear repeating: layer up when venturing out and always know where next shelter’s to be found. Give extra time (another look around) and overall consider slowing down.

All of these different shifts and adjustments attend the changing season and show life in its common essence. Plants, fungi and animals react and respond together, in masses, to huge forces, some made visible today in images derived from satellite data. What a wonder.

Thanks to life and to seasons, for showing what is common and eternal in what is passing and ephemeral. Giving and sharing times be upon us.