Happy New Year -- 2021

 'Another Year'  2021    

"The old year is gone, the new year begun, and those of us who set store by the calendar draw a line to sum up a total, since it is man's habit to count the minutes and the days and try to map time.  Nature, of course, has her own map of time, and although man's calculations may approximate it, they miss the mark repeatedly.  If we insist on starting the year in mid-Winter, the solstice would be the logical moment, and the solstice occurred nine days ago.  The ancients, being practical people, started their year with the vernal equinox, the beginning of Spring.

But, being insistently illogical, we follow long habit and ingrained tradition and give this day unwonted significance.  We draw a mythical total line, hoping somehow to stop time long enough to sum up.  But even before we have totted the first column, time has gone beyond us.  Time doesn't wait for totals.  Only the tax collector can command time, and even he can't check the sun in its course.  The sun already leans toward Spring and another Summer.

A new year begins, as we say.  And the latent bud on the branch doesn't stir one whit, the blossom in the bulb sleeps undisturbed in the frozen ground.  The woodchuck's hibernating pulse doesn't quicken one beat, and the deer in the thicket is just as hungry as he was yesterday.  Man is the only animal to whom this new year is important.  All the others live by the day and the season.

The old year passes.  We draw up the totals, and the stars wheel and the sun slowly widens its arc, creating their own years.  Spring is already on the way, the Spring that knows no calendar."     Hal Borland, Sundial of the Seasons

Sending wishes and hopes for a kinder, healthier New Year--for us all.