Quiet Days

Mark Mid-December

The year’s final days ticked by without hurry this week as horses grazed and warmed in the sun, or men in hardhats bent toward their roadwork while Newtown police officers eyed traffic.

With the first day of winter waiting to dawn Monday, the season still had not seen its rush of children with ice skates headed onto Hawley Pond. Snowmen crumbling since last week’s snowfall still offered signs of the season, however. Holiday decorations wound around lampposts and fence rails; twinkling lights outlined doorways or illuminated evergreen wreaths.

Men and women parked outside the Newtown Municipal Center, drove toward the Newtown Youth Academy, or pushed a stroller through Fairfield Hills as they meandered through an ordinary day.

Off of Huntingtown Road, few tire tracks marked the Orchard Hill Nature Center’s lot after Tuesday night left barely enough precipitation to hold a footprint. Along Meadowbrook Road horses pushed through mounds of fresh hay on the ground, while around the corner men operated machinery to make repairs to the bridge on Cold Spring Road. “Bridge Out” signs met motorists.

Hidden from view along Sugar Street were the cows normally nosing toward a split-rail fence at Ferris Acres Creamery, but the Paproskis’ Castle Hill Farm field along the road was a panorama of black and white, and brown, cows, turned earth capped with frost, bare patches of soil, and dried wisps of plants from an earlier season.