Alight
. . . somehow I’m learning to listen
To a sound like the sun going down
In the magic that morning is bringing
There’s a song for the life I have found . . .
Rodney Crowell
“Song for the Life”
The sweetest, clearest light this year arrived from the far edge of the world
Flung from beyond the Divide, across thirty miles of Prickly Pear Valley to a tumble of tree-lined gulches, a lonely horse, a rising bank of clouds above the Belts.
Eternity’s box of mirrors angling the last riffs of day up into the sky and onto the eastern horizon.
I love sun, summer.
The precious season where the ends of day almost meet.
I love winter sun as well when it eludes inversion’s grimy clutch and melts the ponderosa’s white coat.
But I am drawn now to radiant and reflected light.
Tomatoes and geraniums fattening on sizzling energy.
The gently moving luminescence of gold aspen.
Mountain ash blazing red and orange into the kitchen.
Bright smiles, shining with curiosity, delight, honesty,
The running lights of friendship
Fed by adventure’s heat, pain’s fire, compassion’s banked coals.
Stages glowing in a dark world
Pulling me from fear and loneliness into new stories, sweeps of song.
Distillations from incandescent minds, wise hearts.
Shimmering essays, perfect poems, novels rich in imagery at once familiar and unanticipated,
Glittering embroideries of word and thought that call me to listen, to live.
The moon in all its sizes and moods—implausible every damn time.
And always that purpling time—the Walter family word—mountains alight from a sun that’s already put itself to bed.
I hadn’t heard the word in years—verb or adjective. But in May the soft-spoken, cultured Voice of the London Underground invited me to “Alight Here” for each Tube stop’s treasures: the National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, Harrods, Tower Hill, the British Museum, St. Pancras, Convent Garden.
And the word fit the year. Not so much noonday sun. More the diffuse, flickering light of a lantern, more the delicate long-fingered reaches of sunset. I’d officially retired in 2013, but still clocked hours to tackle web updates and periodic press releases. This April, I really left! I revived my contracting paperwork, found a great writer who said “yes” to some coaching, settled into hospice volunteering, researched and crafted half-a-dozen essays for the Montana Historical Society’s Women’s History Matters blog, read, puttered, took to the road, anticipated your visits! And watched and listened–alone and with you—for the quiet miracles that illuminate these years.
- Monument Valley’s ghostly spires and mittens fading from sun to snow squall.
- Ian Tyson and his restored voice, Red Molly, and Corb Lund–music dancing across the Smith River Valley.
- Royal Albert Hall roaring with Tchaikovsky; the Novella rocking with Mama Mia, the Ellen holding its breath for the Wailin’ Jennys’ last note.
- Rodney Crowell singing his heart out to the farthest reaches of the Paradise Valley.
- San Pedro, the Pacific, the Port of Los Angeles.
- Geysers, bison, mirrored mountains, tumbleweeds chasing each other across a lonely road, elk bugling at first light.
- Sweet celebratory weddings, companionable cups of cocoa, homemade birthday cake, bonfires, wild thunderstorms, trip reports, reviving wine, noisy cafés, your quiet home, my porch.
- Tentative, trusting hugs from little ones; the sweet and considerable weight of a new baby in my arms.
- John O’Donahue, Willa Cather, Bill Bryson, Richard Hugo, E. B. White, Elizabeth Berg, Diane Ackerman—exquisite favorites–and mysteries unfolding in London’s back lanes and up Montana’s mountain roads.
And somehow I’m learning to listen
For a sound like the breeze dying down
In the magic that morning is bringing
There’s a song for the friends I have found
They keep my feet on the ground…
You. You bring the steadiest, cleanest light into my world–from next door, the other side of the ocean, across our shared lifetimes or these recent months. You edge the dark hours of the night with dawn!
In this season and in the year to come, may your life be alight.
