The intermittent sunlight wheels in to brighten the yellow grasses and make the sand sparkle. To the north it is as if the sky were moving down from its Arctic limits and announcing new themes, with iceberg clouds, and high walls of cold against which the sun strikes new fire, while the wind rushes down to make the message felt. A flock of sharp-tailed sparrows lands on the sand, the marsh-side of a dune. They fly up into the stiff, cold air, and then drop down into a small hollow for protection. They stay there for a while under the great force of wind and blown sand, not closely knit so much as spread out in what looks like a perilous unanimity. If one sparrow should stray even a foot away from the rest, in their over-all, though loose, pattern, I feel as if it must be irretrievably lost, blown off, and separated. That which holds the sharp-beaked, yellow-headed little birds together is in their senses. They intercommunicate as one flock and form. It is a control--as lightly manifested as the sparrows themselves, but as powerful as the elements against which they stand. _December_ _An Old Place, an Old Man_ When the feel of winter comes, in November or early December--though by astronomical calculation winter does not start until December twenty-second--when the first hard seal is set on the ground, and we are settled in with a new plainness, then it is not difficult to bring back yesterday and its country living. Winter’s role in the year’s wheel is an arresting, for the sake of renewal, a sleep, or half sleep, for later waking. It has its own suspense and violence, its roars and silences, like the other seasons, but in general its order is of a different quality, having an inwardness and resistance, a bare, gray need to keep things inside and hidden down. This is the time of year that shows a plain connection between human beings and their land. I see last leaves whipping around the hollows off an old Cape road, or walk through the now more oblique rays of the sun that yellow the sandy ground held by thin, waving grasses, gray beach plum or bayberry bushes, and I recognize what has been left behind. Here, surrounded by open slopes, is an abandoned house site, now a cellar hole, walled by square blocks of glacial granite. Orchard grass, timothy, and redtop still engage the old domesticity. Inside their circle you can see where children played, water was fetched and carried, chickens fed, and voices raised. There are yucca plants close to the foundations, and a rose or two. I transplanted such a rose a few years ago, and with added nourishment it turned from a slight, single-petaled flower to a great bunch of pinkish-purple fragrance.