Christmas Eve and Christmas morning

My friend Lee included this suggestion in his Christmas Eve email: 

Make sure you take a minute, before you go to bed, to step outside and listen to the quiet for a moment.  If you do it will make the bed even more "nice & toasty" than it already is.

I took his advice and went out onto the deck for a few minutes before going to bed. It was too warm for snow, so no White Christmas. And too overcast to see the Star of Bethlehem or any suspicious flying sleigh-like objects. Since we live in the country, it was quiet, though, the only noise being the wind gently rustling the dried leaves on the red oaks. I listened, was calm and went to sleep.

About 2:30, I was awakened by a great silence. The power had gone off, which meant my white noise machine, the refrigerator, the furnace and all the other little noisemakers in the house had gone silent. Tom called in the outage and I crawled back under my quilt. It took about two hours for the power to return, but during the interim it was utterly silent. In the house, of course, I heard no rustling leaves or anything else. To be honest, I didn't really fall asleep soundly again until the power and the sounds came back.

After breakfast, Tom and I went out to put up a No Trespassing sign at the end of a trail he had just opened up in the woods. (No, not a guard cat sign.) That sounds somewhat Scrooge-like for Christmas morning, but the trail ends where a snowmobile trail runs along the back of the property. Tom wants to make sure snowmobilers don't get lost by taking the wrong fork in the road at that point. He gives permission for the track to come through the back of the property, but we don't want the machines and their noise up nearer the house. It was the first time I had walked the new path and it is a nice, winding way down the ridge. 

We came back along another loop he has made with the guys who are cutting trees from our woods to use for fuel. It is sad to see how many trees we have lost to the oak wilt, but the result of all the clearing is a more park-like effect. While the weather allows -- and until the mosquitoes and other predators arrive in the summer -- these paths will be great places for me to get in some of my 10,000 steps each day.

Our Christmas gift to ourselves this year is a membership in the Wisconsin State Historical Society. Among other things, this includes free admission to a number of state historical sites. We hope to take advantage of this and be motivated by it during the coming year to visit those we have not already seen. One of the sites is the Madeline Island Museum way up at the tip of Wisconsin. Just like our trip to Door County back in September, this should make for a pleasant getaway after the heavy tourist season ends.