A New Year's Day

The first day of the year began with a heavy fog layered over frost.  By nine, the sun was filtering through.  We took a New Year's walk around the pond and then went on to the other property. 

 The light was amazing. 

Technically tomorrow I have off, but I'll be going down to my classroom early to spend the day working in my classroom.  On the last afternoon before Winter Break I bolted for home so quickly that I left everything as it was.  The Christmas decorations will still be up and my first job will be to get all that put away.  After that will be putting up a new science bulletin board and lesson planning with the other 4th grade teacher.  And so my teaching life resumes. 

These past two weeks have been so good to me.  It took several days for me to let go of all my preoccupations with school, but when I finally was able to, I embraced our quiet life here to the fullest.  We didn't go anywhere or do anything particularly exciting.  I'll admit that I'm a little disappointed that we never made it to the ocean or the mountains or even a museum.  But I wove, walked, gardened, blogged, cooked, read, visited,  and enjoyed being with Bruce (and all the other animals). 

The luxury of just having some time to oneself to look inward and outward cannot be overestimated.  I begin this new year grateful for this gift of time.