Silent Night

The dogs began barking.  I tried to ignore them and the blinking red digits on the clock. 2:15 a.m. by pulling the blankets back over my head. It didn't work. The four of them were just getting warmed up. I groaned. That meant either moose or horse. A cow moose and her calf had walked past the house earlier in the evening, so they may be wandering back down the road. Or, I sighed as I got out of bed, one of the horses had decided to come up to the house for a midnight snack. Sure enough, Hot Shot was standing in front of the porch steps. We keep the grain locked in the mud room but a bale of hay was still on the deck. I pulled on my boots and a coat and went outside.  I threw the hay into the pen where the other two horses waited, Red stamping his feet impatiently as I struggled through the snow.  I led Hot Shot back through the downed section of fence and he went over to his hay pile. I rigged downed fence pole as best I could.  Last winter's heavy snows played havoc with our fence posts, and this year, an entire 75 foot section of fence is down. The horses don't wander outside of the pen, although Hot Shot will come up to the porch for the occasional midnight snack.
       I looked around.  It was one of those nights where you want to sit outside for hours just listening to the silence. The full moon glowed silver, reflecting on the new snow.  Everything glowed like the snow had millions of tiny lights. There was no wind. I just stood there in the driveway, looking out of the muskegg. The sky looked like the planetarium at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.
         Even out here, in the middle of nowhere, silence is often hard to come by.  But last night, the silence enveloped me. It was peaceful. Beautiful. And for a few minutes, I remembered what had attracted me to the beauty of Alaska. Peace comes at strange moments. Like at 2 in the morning when the horses decide they want a snack.