The sea beyond is full of long waves that take the low sunlight of late afternoon and swoop and fall with it. They come in from the distance and then rise as they approach the shore, showing their marbled, curved surfaces, to pause at the crest and plunge down. A stiff north wind holds them back a little. Manes of spray whip back at their cresting and when they fall the spray rises up almost vertically. Just inshore, where the breakers fling in their prows along the sloping beach, the waters foam with constant movement, in and out, all bubbling and shifting with a turbulent milk, whose surface looks opalescent--colors of blue, green, and pink bordered by heavy pearl. And what a sound! A thundering, a loud fermentation, with an occasional great soft clash of waves like cymbals, the long surf roaming and lunging in the evening light for miles and miles. From where I stand on the cliff top I can see a little group of men and children jumping and throwing sticks and stones into the surf. They run back and forth with its rhythm, playing touch and go with it, running to keep warm in the wind, playing as if they had to, dancing for the surf’s thunder. They laugh, shout, hurl driftwood into it. They jump and wave their arms as the water reflects their images, just on the fringe of an immense, terrible beauty, responding with an antic kind of love. The sea provides a cold, unfathomed latitude in the tightness of January. On land too there is a kind of under-rhythm of things allowed, or rather a special winter pace and timing, each life with its relation to the cold. The thin light and air seem to define the leeway. Thick snow showers slant in. Sky, hills, and shore are blotted out. There is nothing to be seen but the naked trees, the oak leaves like tattered old flags holding against the wind that kicks the flakes ahead. The storm abates into gusts, and occasional sweeps of snow with blue patches blown clear in the sky. At each advent of this blue clarity, with sharp spun strands of light coming in from the sun, the birds respond. Snow swirls. Wind seethes. There is nothing to be seen but a tree sparrow or a chickadee at the bird feeder. Then the blue patches show again and the earth clears to vision. A flock of juncos fly in, or a blue jay glides through; a red-tailed hawk screams in the sky. It is as if they were all puppets dancing for their master light. [Illustration] Special response is as much a part of winter as extreme reaction or withdrawal. I see this in the birds. I hear it in the yawing creaks of a pine, in dead leaf stir, wind speech, in their collaboration. I feel it in the quality of the season, its rigid shocks, its holding hard and letting go, its suspense and trigger edges, the obedience it calls for, the inertness and tight compliance.