This morning of December 26 is serene, Ulster County. The earth exhibits the quiet hangover of the holiday, with the occasional automobile taking the coming day seriously. May the drivers be fat and happy with the memory of a feast.
The temperature is currently 10° and will be working towards a high of 25° — nothing a scarf and beanie can’t ward off. The sky will be cloudless and blue. Sunrise arrives at 7:23 just as it did yesterday, and sets at 4:31. The day’s length hovers at nine hours and eight minutes of light.
The tide will rise highest at 3:38 p.m,, four feet and four inches above its natural place in the scheme of riverbanks and levees.
Humidity is at 75 percent. As no rain is forecast, the tide lacks any real threat to those who live on land.
The moon also rises at 10:21 a,m. and is filling out quite nicely. Fourteen percent of a crescent moon will set again at 8:19 p.m., leaving the sky full of stars easily gazed.
According to the benevolent fur trapper Dionizas, who lives on Mount Tremper, there remain 74 days of winter temperatures ahead.
Now for the snow report, we turn to Bjorn Jorgensen out at Belleayre Mountain. How does the morning find you, Bjorn?
Jorgensen: Quite well, Johannes. Yes, the temperature at the summit is -13° Celsius. No, there has been no snow. The wind is losing its commitment, but still rallies here and there for a good blow. Though the conditions today could otherwise pass for yesterday’s, the morning has been a lively one.
Johannes: Lively already, and the sun not yet risen.
Jorgensen: There is quite a bit of light. The sun rises earlier here. We are much higher up than you are.
Johannes: I suppose you’ve got a better angle.
Jorgensen: Let me tell you about a dream I had, in the half-light this morning, while I was awake.
Johannes: More wolves and more wedding parties run down in the woods?
Bjorn: No, my friend. This one is about what happened when I returned from the summit, when the light had just begun to touch the sky. It starts with a young woman in the snow. She sat with her back against a hawthorne tree, holding a green apple in one hand and coring it with a wicked-looking paring knife. She must have been there a while because icicles were melting from the braches above her.
“Well, don’t keep us in suspense, gentleman from up the hill,” she said. “What’s in the sack?”
“Gourds. Carved-out pumpkins. Or squash, really. Butternut and acorn squash.”
Even in the darkness, her hair, had a deep, rich copper luster that set itself off from the land around, everywhere white with snow. I did not stare but wished dearly for moonlight.
“Oh, that’s what you use to keep the candlelight in the trees,” she said. “Clever.”
“This is correct. The effect is quite nice, I believe, when there are eleven or 13 candles spread out in the birch trees. I suppose it makes my circle of light larger, with the fire ring like my sun and the candles like my stars … in the branches”
My words had become very formal, I hardly knew what I said. Though I tried not to bore, I spoke somewhere between the rhythm of a German botanist explaining the features of a dried lily or a Swedish actor in a Bergman movie. Like von Sydow confessing his fear of death in the snow. As tied as my tongue was, I was lucky to say anything at all. A furry pile of dead rabbits lay supine at her galoshed feet. Their black eyes were open, but they did not see the sky lightening.
“Forgive me,” I started, though I had done nothing wrong.
“So it’s to be a confession,” she said, having thrown the core away and sliced the apple neatly in half, and the halves in halves. And those halves, too. “What a pity it would be for a daughter of Ulster to die so far from home because of a strange man in a strange land.”
Higher up, a rushing bluster of wind spoke through a thick stand of pines. Their needles said nothing I could understand. Just trees making wishes. She fixed me with her green eyes. My heartbeat counted time.
“Jorgensen is my name. Bjorn Jorgensen. Is that a song?”
“A very old poem.”
As we spoke, our breaths formed clouds. This is the fault of the dew point, when the air can hold no more water.
She placed each cut of apple into the waiting open mouths of each rabbit, fixing the wedges to their teeth.
“You’re Irish,” I said, which was an obvious and stupid thing to say.
“The gentleman presumes much.” She set the knife blade into the snow and stood up, wiping her hands with a thick cotton scarf.
“Aye,” she said drawling the word like a Scots person instead. “Donnegal, horse thieves and robbers we. Me father was bewitched, well, quite taken with a woman in the south. So it was to be the ample lap of luxury after all. Written in the stars. County Cork, I mean.
And now look at us. Giving our history to anyone who asks. You can keep a secret, can’t you? Scratch that. Bad luck to make a bond at dawn. Tell anyone you want. I don’t care.”
The rabbits she placed into a sack one by one.
Johannes: She’s feral, Bjorn. She kills more rabbits than a prowling housecat kills birds.
Jorgensen: Johannes, you have a very strong reaction to hunting. It’s quite natural. What is strange is walking along a grocery aisle with piped radio music or worse, and choosing among a selection of plastic-wrapped corpsemeat butchered and chopped and colored with red dye.
Johannes: You can get used to anything, Bjorn. But the scream of that rabbit you described. It’s stayed with me.
Jorgensen: Yes. Well, we walked along together in the snow and the subject came up. She regretted that her aim was not true. If you do it right, she said, it’s over immediately.
Johannes: Charming, girl. Did you get her name?
Jorgensen: She said her name was Althea. Minerva was wrong.
Join the family! 
