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JanuaryJanuary 14, 2008 The first Thursday of the month it was 4 degrees Fahrenheit when I got up. Uhura Mazda had that cold metal feel when I turned the ignition, so before heading into Vineyard Haven for breakfast with the writers, I let her warm up for five minutes. The following Thursday it was already 40 degrees before the sun had cleared the horizon, and by midday it had reached the high 50s. Last night I heard rain pelting on the skylights, and when I got up this morning the deck was coated half an inch thick with snowy slush that rolled up like a carpet when I pushed it with the shovel. Rhodry roused himself and went out, didn't see his shadow or any good reason to go down the stairs, so he came back in and went back to sleep. So on Martha's Vineyard, January can't be defined by its temperature. What does make January January? Returning light is the big one. Soon after the first of the year, and the month, there was some glow left in the sky when I'd return from a trail ride at nearly five o'clock. These days I'm getting home from the barn closer to six than to five thirty. I wake up with the light, and when the sky is clear that means six thirty, not quarter past seven. Through the summer it's midmorning light from the big window above my front door that obscures the computer screen; now it's early afternoon light through the westernmost one of my two south-facing skylights. Early-winter sunsets are extravagantly gorgeous, especially if you favor blues and reds and all the deepening admixtures thereof. Bare trees trace black webs against roses and burgundies and dark royal blues that I'd wear all the time if they'd stick around long enough. The new house being built near the barn is at the stick stage, but it's sited on low terrain and if you want to see the sky through the frame you have to lie on the ground. The green is finally leaching from the lawns and pastures, though the horses still find plenty out there to interest them. Green blades and those the color of faded straw blend in a tweed that's greener close up than it seems at a distance. A wild storm rolled through while I was closing at the barn Friday night. Through the cracked-open barn doors lightning lit up the back yard. It seemed so close that I wheeled my wheelbarrow very briskly to the manure pile and felt relief when I got back under cover. It was a long wait for the thunder but the thunder was loud. Rhodry hunkered down in the grain room and worried. Then the same thing happened out front: FLASH! beat beat beat BOOM! Saturday morning was crystal clear. Ginny called to report another boom: the neighbors had slaughtered their pigs with one blast of a shotgun. (I'm not sure how they managed this.) The pigs' names were Pork Chop and Bacon, so their fate was clear to all except maybe them. A few days ago the kids were vastly fascinated to see them rutting in their pen. Horses, I'm told, have a special aversion to pigs. I've heard stories about horses that refused to get into a stock trailer that once transported pigs but had been washed down several times since. When Allie's had occasion to go past pigs -- for a while there were a half dozen in residence at the farm across the dirt road -- she had to be coaxed at first but eventually got used to it, though any sudden pig noise or movement would set her snort-dancing in place. But at one time or another I've seen all of the horses at Malabar Farm standing rapt at the paddock fence closest to Pork Chop and Bacon: watching Pig TV, I said. That particular channel's gone dark, but I'm guessing there will be two new piglets in the spring. Traffic has dropped off some since December, especially since the comings and goings between Christmas and New Year's, but by the standards of 15 or 20 years ago it's not exactly light. January is big haul month in the license plate game: each year I spot between half and two-thirds of the year's total in January. I've got 16 already and that's without looking too hard. Around Groundhog Day I realize that winter's half over and summer will be coming in too hard on its heels. January's too soon for that. In January there's still time.
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