'Twas The Night Before Christmas...

It's just a few days before Christmas and as I stand on my snowy beach looking out on an almost frozen lake, I can't help but reflect back on Christmas a few years past where we found ourselves on the verge of a big house move and celebrating Christmas amongst a giant maze of packing boxes.

I didn't know then that as the Clovelly door closed on us, another door was slowly opening and would direct us down a magical path to a very different way of life. The sale and consequential move from our Clovelly house a few Christmases ago has given way to the birth of our Vaseux Lake house. We've since been on a transitional flight path that has taken us from suburbia to rural lake life.

The move into the lake house has been a dream come true and every day I am grateful to call this lake my home and the people of Oliver my neighbours. So on that note, I am looking back to a time when this all began and revisiting a poem I wrote on December 22, 2011 for my old blog Running with a View:

‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house
was a maze of packing boxes, no room for a mouse.
No stockings were hung by the fire with care,
no tree, no lights; had the Grinch moved in here?


The movers would come in just a few weeks
so Christmas had taken a gloomy back seat.
As I lay in my bed, attempting to sleep
I suddenly sprang up and leapt to my feet.


I would go for a run and work this thing out,
I couldn’t let the Grinch fill me with doubt.
As my husband lay nestled all snug in our bed,
I pulled on my runners, grabbed a cap for my head.


Outside the moon shone lustrous and bright
and it lit up my way on this cold Christmas night.
I ran all the way down to the cove by the sea
and I couldn’t believe the view I did see.


Out on the bluff a strange sight did appear,
a jolly old elf with eight sturdy reindeer.
And nearby a sleigh, piled high with new toys
was ready to deliver to good girls and boys.

 

I shook my head slowly, wiped sleep from my eyes
but the vision remained, I’m telling no lies.
The jolly old elf was so lively and quick
and I thought to myself, could this be St. Nick?


He was chubby and plump, just like in the story
and I laughed when I saw him in all of his glory.
His eyes--how they twinkled! His nose like a cherry!
And he winked as he waved at me, gleeful and merry.


Then he chuckled and shouted, called his reindeer by name
and more fleeter than eagles on the wing they came.
He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle
and I was left dumbstruck as they flew like a thistle.


I still was in wonder as I made my way back
to my house which now stood with the moon at its back.
And way up above me, I heard a merry “ho ho ho!”
and in a blink of an eye, it started to snow.


Renewed with the spirit of Christmas and hope
I skipped back to my home, there was no time to mope.
And as I tiptoed back in to my mess of a hall
I knew this would be the merriest Christmas of all!

Wishing you all a magical Christmas!

THE VOICE IN THE ICE

With just one week to go before the winter solstice, and the frantic holiday pitch building to a frenzied crescendo, November is now nothing but a blur to me. The winter wind continues to etch itself indelibly into my daily routine and is one of the few sounds to break the silence of winter along with the occasional great horned owl and coyote call.

But yesterday, in a very unlikely place, I encountered another voice of winter: the lake. After a bone-numbing cold spell marked by daytime temperatures that barely reached -10 Celsius and nighttime temperatures that plummeted to -15 Celsius, the lake froze over. 

Yesterday, late afternoon, the temperature rose to a balmy 4 degrees-Celsius, the air was still and it was perfect conditions for happy hour on the beach with a bonfire. As usual, I was first at the fire with my glass and bottle of wine. I settled myself in front of the roaring fire and as I listened to the snap and crackle of the burning wood and sipped my wine, I heard something else--a long, slow, rumbling groan resonating from somewhere nearby. 

Unsure what the sound was, or where it was coming from, I looked around me, but there was nobody or anything remotely near to where I was sitting. Over the ensuing 10 minutes I heard the incredibly loud sounds over and over. The sounds ranged from a low, belly-aching groan to a high, fast-paced swoosh. At this point, Mark joined me and as he sat down a giant boom and swoosh enveloped us. Mark, looking as a child would who had just discovered the magic of Christmas, exclaimed “It’s the lake, making noises”. 

Bev and Lanny joined us and we sat and listened to the lake stretch and yawn as the waxing moon rose in the sky above us. As darkness descended, a band of coyotes on the fringe of the lake joined in and the lake chorus sang loudly all around us.

Geologists have a name for this acoustic phenomenon: ice yowling. Yowling is described as low, drawn out moans that are very reminiscent of whale calls. A YouTube search on “ice sounds” turns up a dizzying array of recordings, though none of the recordings sounded exactly like our lake.

Our neighbor Bev has been at the lake for many years and is most familiar with the voice of the ice. As ice expands and contracts, it causes stresses through its depth and across its breadth. These stresses cause the ice to crack and refreeze. The sounds of this cracking and refreezing are transmitted through the ice and can get exuberantly loud. The colder the temperature, the faster the ice grows and the more frequent the stress cracks develop.

The lake does not grumble and groan every evening, and there’s no telling when to expect its eerie yowl. But just hearing its hauntingly beautiful voice confirms what I already know, this lake is alive with a spiritual energy and I am blessed to live here.