i miss the beauty of the country.

the city is a good pace for me. it’s my pace most of the time. at any time of night, i can walk to get a cup of coffee, and i’m starting to learn familiar faces at the local places. but this evening, as the sun was setting around 5 p.m., i was reading this:

“There’s a certain slant of light,” on winter afternoons, Emily Dickinson points out, and “When it comes the landscape listens.” In the city, electricity makes it easy to blur the boundaries between day and night, winter and spring, and I do, usually by burning the candle at both ends. But on winter nights in the country, when I’m in the back of beyond, the only candles meant to be burning are on my dining room table.

Simmer down now, the shadows seem to say. By five o’clock the curtains are drawn, the fire is blazing, and the lamps are lit, throwing off golden slivers that creep through the cracks between the windows and the doors. The cares of the day are set down by the front door, sure to be picked up in the morning. But for now, the conviviality of evening awaits my company.

Outside, it’s dark. And dark as you have never seen before, unless you grew up in the country. — Sarah Ban Breathnach, Romancing the Ordinary, p. 460

After reading this entry, I couldn’t help but set my head back and pause. I thought of my sister in her home, with her family, and how she probably has candles lit on the table. I could almost smell her apple bread and coffee. I thought of the country in the winter. How quiet it is. How dark it is. How hauntingly peaceful it is. Outside my front door, and from my porch, I can watch people bustling. They’re getting money out of ATMs. They’re picking up the pizza. They’re tasting wine. They’re running to and fro, not stopping for one breath.

And on most days, I smile at the constant hum along the streets. But tonight, I’ll dream of taking a chilled night stroll down Murphy Road, where the only sound you hear is … well … your own two feet.