the dharma blog

New Year’s Day comes like a scene out of an old Western movie. You are unceremoniously thrown out of the doors of a saloon. You land in the street on your face. You stand up, brush yourself off, give one last look at the bar, decide it’s not worth the fight, and walk off down the street, a little bit happy to be evicted, even if it wasn’t on your terms.

At least, that’s how I feel now that the holidays are finally behind us. It was fun while it lasted, but now the long quiet of the depths of winter can work their wonders, restoring peace to the soul, even if it is sometimes accompanied by a little cabin fever and boredom.

The five or six weeks starting with Thanksgiving and ending with New Year’s were a full time for us. Events and obligations I had been looking forward to for months came at us steadily. From hosting a small Thanksgiving, to a full Christmas weekend of wandering to and fro, to hosting a cathartic New Year’s Eve party, life took on a different shape than the rest of the year.

That’s a good thing though. Traditions are as much a part of how we experience the change of the seasons as is the diminishing and expanding of daylight.

I found a site today that gives you sunrise and sunset information for wherever you live. Today, the sun rose in Minneapolis/St. Paul at 7:51 a.m. and will set at 4:41 p.m. By the end of the month, it will be 7:35 a.m. and 5:17 p.m., respectively.

Not a lot, but I’ll take it.

At the same time I’ve been shopping for new cross-country ski gear and reveling in the first snowy early winter in recent memory, I’ve also been doing plenty of daydreaming about canoeing rivers and fishing trout streams. Sometimes I’m reasonable, just wishing for a warm spring day when the foliage is sparse and things look a little bleak still, but it’s enough to get out paddling or fishing. But at other times, I let my mind drift to the height of summer, when you leave the waders in the car and wet wade in a cold spring-fed creek, or beach the canoe periodically to swim, or have a long evening to wander the woods.

But such activities are truthfully a ways off. Best to make the most of the moment. As I was falling asleep after the New Year’s Eve party, our house finally quiet after the departure or drifting off of old friends, I thought how a good party is a lot like a good life. As the host, you can put in the hours of cleaning and cooking and other preparations, but it’s not a party without the guests. And so is life not life without friends.

Happy New Year to everyone! I hope 2008 is full of adventure and happiness for one and all!