While I was away

I know I’ve been remiss in my blogging lately. I was working at a temp job the last couple weeks; and at the same time, I felt myself sink further into the winter blues. It seems like sometimes, as then, my depression has a life of it’s own; and I just have to ride it out until better times. So I hadn't felt like writing (and had less free time) until now.

The job was nothing exciting to write about – except that it’s location was at a business retreat in the county. I had a half hour commute over what the locals seem to call the “hills” but sure seem like mountains to me. There was always more snow and ice on them than down here at the house (which in turn, tends to have a little more than the city of Albany). The roads climbed and dropped and wound around countless blind curves, and when it snowed they were not well plowed. Yet the speed limit is 55MPH, which seemed too fast for me. Fortunately, there were very few other cars; and most of those passed the other way; so I drove slower than the limit most of the time.

I wish I could’ve taken photos of the scenery however. It looked different every day: Ice, snow, fog, rain; but it was always beautiful. Sometimes the trees in coated in ice that looked like glass, and made strange crackling sounds when the wind blew. Other times they were traced in white and looked like delicate lace. The birches were more flexible than other trees and bowed over the road under the weight of the ice. I would sometimes drive into a bank of fog and everything would be gray and white, except for muted bits of color appearing in the foreground: yellow grasses, iridescent purple brambles, red-orange bittersweet berries, and dark brownish red seedheads on the staghorn sumacs. Then I would come out from under the fog just as quickly, and everything seemed clear and brilliantly colored. One afternoon the winds blew the snows off the ground and into the air in huge moving clouds that you could see rolling over the hills, which faded to white in the distance. One clear morning the sky was deep blue and the sunlight was pale yellow. The snow was golden where the sun fell, while all of the long shadows of the trees were blue. It almost looked surreal.

You would think such beauty would cheer me up, but perhaps it would’ve been better if it were spring or summer when things were green and living. I felt somehow like I was in a harsh alien landscape in which I didn’t belong. I would ask myself what I was doing there. I realized I still missed Philadelphia, and I felt like I was going even further away from the city, from home, and further into isolation. The job did little to make me feel less alone. I had no phone (or cellphone), e-mail, or anyone there really to talk to. I worked mostly in silence in the corner of a small basement room. It was a strange experience.