New Year's Eve

In the past few years we have spent New Year’s Eve in semi-isolated places… far from the city lights, busy traffic with “Don’t drink and drive” slogans, and the noisy tooting of horns and exploding fire crackers. Even so, there was still a semblance of ushering in the new year, however small that activity was. When we lived aboard our sailboat and were moored in Roche Harbor, a single moment of banging pots and pans, and a woman’s voice calling out “Happy New Year,” was all that we had to announce the arrival of a new year. Here in the darkness of a winter night, there is little to mark the change from one year to the next. Tomorrow will seem no different than today. The beavers will nibble on tender willow branches that they have stored on the bottom of their ice-covered pond. The red squirrel will hunt for her winter caches of food, and sit on a branch to strip seeds from white spruce cones. A coyote will hunt and kill a snowshoe hare. Humans are the only ones who pay attention to numbers on a calendar, who make one day more important than another; who celebrate endings and beginnings. Past and future is a human condition. We have the ability to make changes in our lives, and to our habitat… to make tomorrow different than today. It is what sets us apart from the natural world, and that should evoke in us an awesome sense of responsibility. Tomorrow morning will be pretty much the same for us, we will wake to the pale light of dawn, stir up the fire in the wood stove, have coffee while listening to CBC Radio. But what we do here on these wilderness acres, will determine the future for all the creatures who have no concept of a New Year.

... P. L. Morningstar
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