Vermont – Evan Lindorff-Ellery

29 December 2011, 23:45

We went outside and stacked wood for a couple hours. Very cold and invigorating. The sun was setting, and the sky had that perfect grey-purple sheen, like the large dusted end of a glass vase sitting on an old table in the late-summer early-evening ending daylight of the last beautiful place in Florida. Then we went for a walk. A new place through the forest, with Sarah. She turned back to the house after stopping by a frozen pond and sliding across its rippled, dark glassy surface, and my dad and I continued into the woods. It was a quiet kind of cold, with a small wind. Every sound in the forest could be heard and brought forth, nearly magnified with importance. Each one so refined and self-contained; whittled down to a perfect sound-event occurring in time with no reference to anything else that ever existed. The moon rose as we went across a field, going home. It was a half moon, on its side, surrounded by stars. Later that night, we were standing on the porch, as Shirley said she heard coyotes in the distance. We did hear them as well, and my dad quickly ran in to the house to fetch a penny whistle. “Sometimes they answer to the penny whistle”, he told me. So he played, on the porch, in the dark and cold, to the coyotes. No response. He laughed. He played again. No response. He laughed again. Played once more. No response. He laughed again and said, “I guess they’re not into the music tonight.” We both laughed, “Yeah…” Despite that, we both knew they were into the music tonight.