Winter days drift slowly. On bright days, sun pours in the front windows of the house and I bask in the light. More frequently, the windows frame a dark green, gray, and white landscape. On the railing out front I’ve placed a blue pot filled with branches of red berries. I put it there wondering if birds would like the berries but they ignore it so I’ve hung a feeder from the plant hook where a fuschia lives in summer.

A week ago we had warm and rainy weather before the onset of cold temperatures again. The accumulated snow from previous storms melted in the rain and I walked around the gardens last Saturday, snipped branches off my discarded Christmas tree and used them to insulate the crocosmia from the predicted low temperatures.

I used to interact with winter more, plunge through the snow to fill distantly placed bird feeders, strap on my snowshoes to explore the field behind the house or rake snow off the roof. But gradually, a combination of aging joints and weather patterns that bring mixed icy precipitation has kept me inside more, viewing the world through glass panes, scurrying from house to car to office or store then car and home.

My only New Year’s intention this year was to show up in my life, but I’m not sure what that means in winter, when the pull is toward hibernation.

I look for things that delight my senses. Hot chocolate made with a dark chocolate cocoa mix and drunk from my red mug. The feel of the cat’s soft fur, her warm body weighting my legs. A dark red poinsettia in a dark blue pot. The smell of a new book when I first open it. The sharp hot bite of chili. Music, like this piece from Caroline Shaw, which both startles and satisfies me.

I saw a short video recently, The Monolith, about the NYC artist Gwyneth Leech and her response to several losses, including a skyscraper being built right outside her studio window, blocking the view that had been inspiring her art for years. She came to terms with the “monolith” by seeing it as colors and shapes and painting all the stages of construction. It’s a story about the creative process, about loss, about life, about showing up.

“…to be alive is something holy, fierce, and precious,” Jena Schwartz writes in a FaceBook post. Through the short winter days and long nights, I try to remember those words.