Gathering Dark

The prospect of my second winter in the North East is making me nervous. We started getting ready ridiculously early this year; bringing in tools, denuding our son's fort of carpet and toys, pulling sweaters and gloves out of storage. For a month now I've been waiting anxiously for the winter. But of course it doesn't come all at once- it's like the cartoon sequence of the comic hero whose free fall is broken by a tree limb momentarily, only to resume a fall broken by subsequently lower and lower branches. The cold snaps, and plateaus and snaps again. On a day like today when the sun is shining, I am happy to put on my warm socks and take another 500 pictures of leaves in various stages of their fall process. But last week when it rarely got out of the 30s and the clouds never lifted the winter darkness loomed oppressive. Now that daylight savings time is over, the growing night is upon us. I am ready to hibernate, and can't believe that life plunges forward when we should all clearly "shelter in place".