January 6

Our road is a dead-end street which passes by a small college and an area set aside for town recreation fields, on its way separating our house on the eastern side from the Cournoyer farm that borders on the west.

In the mornings when I am returning from some exercise, I like to walk the last hundred yards of the road to our driveway with my eyes skyward. This is particularly the case on the winter pre-dawn hours, when the skies are clear and the approaching dawn to the east is just beginning to occur.

The road bends slightly to the north at this point, and looking upward I easily spot Polaris at roughly 40 degrees altitude from the horizon. Grove Street forms a tunnel of trees here, with large spruces that line the west side and a mixture of oaks, maples and cherry on the east.

As the dawn nears, the sky on such mornings turns nearly an iridescent blue, what we call a Maxfield Parrish sky. Parrish painted dawns and twilights using layers of paint and varnish to create a unique effect. On certain winter mornings, Mother Nature does the same, and I admire the nearly black tree outlines on either side of the tunnel, with the Maxfield Parrish dawn and Polaris to bring me home.