Today it’s gray. Today the snow that fell on Friday turned to fog then rain then ice then water and now to mud stuck to the bottom of my boots.
We made breakfast for an old friend who was passing through town. He spent the night on our couch and stood next to Husband at his usual place next to the windows, watching as a few deer came in to water at the dam.
He said he forgot how beautiful it can be out here when the snow falls. Our friend doesn’t come home much when it’s white like this. He sipped his coffee and laughed and talked about cattle and his little girl while Husband fried the bacon and I cracked eggs for omelets.
This house is not finished, the stairs have no treads, the trim is not up and the basement is nothing but dirt and chill, but we have served breakfast in this house four weekends in a row, ever since the sky decided to cool us down and get us sitting closer together, pulling on more sweaters and searching for our wool socks.
I put out the place mats and our white wedding dishes, the butter and some blackberry jam and thought it might be ok if we waited on hanging the closet doors for the day.
I brewed another pot of coffee and decided if I never get a beautiful staircase or a bedroom in the loft, at least I have this kitchen and my grandmother’s old table surrounded by windows looking out on a frozen world slowly thawing.
And so I suppose it’s winter now. The clocks have fallen back and it will get dark soon. Our friend started up his pickup and checked the road report before backing out of our muddy drive and pulling out of our lives and into his own. I feel sleepy and chilled and about as colorful as this landscape.
The winter makes me feel lonesome for something and I don’t understand it. But it’s familiar and comforting and it’s alright.
The cold settles in and all of the reasons I wanted to be a tree or a bird or a wildflower in the summer melt away like a snowflake hitting my tongue and I just want to be me, in my kitchen, serving coffee, putting off chores and thinking about dinner.
I just want to be me, looking out the window of this unfinished house, listening to the people I’ve loved for years talk about the weather and Husband’s perfect omelets.
Me.
A little bit lonely, a little bit cold with a little bit of time on a Sunday to be alright with a gray world just the way it is for now.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch... 
Stunning pictures!
I know the way you feel. I always feel a little empty this time of year and long for my family in North Dakota.
Love your posts. Read every one. I lived in wyo &colo Takes me back
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Thank you so much for reading. Love from ND!
Yes, there is a certain melancholy to early Winter. We see the land going into a dormant state. We feel left out because we cannot join in the dormancy. Music lifts my spirits.
Well said Lydia! I was thinking that very thing while looking out the window at the trees. I want to sleep too…
Your lovely images are far from grey but you encapsulate November very well. Are you familiar with Ted Hughes’s poem, ‘November’? It is too long to reproduce here entirely but here are the opening stanzas:
The month of the drowned dog. After long rain the land
Was sodden as the bed of an ancient lake.
Treed with iron and was bird less. In the sunk lane
The ditch – a seep silent all summer –
Made brown foam with a big voice: that, and my boots
On the lanes scrubbed stones, in the gulleyed leaves
Against the hill’s hanging silence;
Mist silvering the droplets on the bare thorns’