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Misty Morning

Misty Morning

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With all the snow, sleet and freezing rain we’ve had recently, it was a relief this morning to wake up and find … fog! And not a pea soup variety but a gentle, mysterious, romantic kind of fog that softens the landscape and turns the trees into ghostly sentinels.

Here is a form of water molecule that we can handle, one that doesn’t need to be shoveled or sprinkled with melting crystals. 

Given the Arctic cold assaulting the midsection of the country, we’re lucky today to have what we have: not hard sub-zero temps but puddles of melted ice draped with mist and brume.

All That Glitters

All That Glitters

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Walks have been slower lately, both to baby an aching foot and stay clear of icy patches on the street. I miss the faster pace. I see more of the landscape this way, true, but the landscape of late winter is not always one on which you want to linger. 

Odd remnants of leftover snow, garbage cans seemingly abandoned by the side of the road, piles of pruned and discarded azalea branches. I’m reminded of late winter in Chicago, when the snow would melt and my enthusiasm for warmer weather would be tempered by seeing what had been hiding beneath the white stuff for weeks.

The suburban landscape is more forgiving, though, the ratio of green to gray easier on the eye, and there have been times lately when the salt crystals on the road gleam like so many rough diamonds. At my slower pace I can see them sparkle. 

Leaving a Trace

Leaving a Trace

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I noticed them the minute I stepped out of the house on Sunday. There was no evidence of humans making their way through the newly fallen snow — but a world of animal tracks greeted me on that still morning.

Tiny bird footprints, the skittering marks of a squirrel or chipmunk, and the more dog-like paw prints of our local fox. Whether hopping, scampering or loping, these animals left their marks.

We think of snow as a covering, coating the verges and leaf piles, making smooth the weed-strewn and the bald-patched.

But snow reveals as well as conceals. It tells us who was here and, if we pay attention, how recently. It’s a blank white slate on which movements make their mark. 

Walker Meets Ice

Walker Meets Ice

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These days, walks are timed for optimal warmth and light. They must also flow around work projects and meetings, which is how I found myself looking for strips of pavement amid the icy patches on our street yesterday about 3 p.m. 

The snow had finally stopped, which wasn’t altogether welcome — it was fun living inside a snow globe for a few days — and a stiff breeze was drying off the wet parts of the road. The problem was that it was freezing the slush almost as quickly. 

I’m a fearless walker … until ice enters the picture. I have a healthy respect for it and will be glad when it melts away. Until then, I will make my way through the landscape very slowly … if at all! 

(Above: where ice should stay, in my humble opinion!) 

Snowscape

Snowscape

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The snowy Sunday quietly and steadily remained a snowy Monday, and has now — wonder of wonders! — become a snowy Tuesday. 

As I write, the flurries that made it difficult to keep a path clean for Copper down the deck stairs (he’s old and slips a lot) have continued flying. The railing I scraped off yesterday has at least another inch or two of white coating. 

Best of all, the winter wonderland brought to us by 28 degrees and enough cold aloft to produce these flakes still falling remains a vision, a snowscape, a sight for sore eyes. 

Snowy Sunday

Snowy Sunday

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It’s not just that the snow fell, finally, the first significant accumulation in two years, but that it fell on Sunday, when many of us could enjoy it. Into the snow went dogs and babies (two of the latter for the first time!). Out of it (and the time if provided) came photos; chicken and wild rice soup; and chocolate chip muffin bread.

Mostly what came of it was total relaxation. There wasn’t much I could do outside. And although there was much I could have done inside, the snow gave me permission to ignore it. 

I read in the morning, watched television while eating lunch, and as the soup simmered and the bread baked, I sat in the darkening living room looking at the white world outside. 

Timbers Sighing

Timbers Sighing

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The wind came barreling in from the west last night, and as usual in this house, it’s quite a noisy experience. It’s not just the wind itself, howling and yawping (that latter word courtesy of a book I’m reading about the poet Walt Whitman); it’s the way these four walls respond to it.

The bamboo (rid of Monday’s ice) scratches the siding, and the sound this leaves in its wake makes me think of an old-fashioned sailing ship. There is that same sense of being at the mercy of the elements, of the very timbers sighing. 

To counteract these harsh noises, though, there is also the purring of the furnace. The colder the night, the more often it’s on, of course, and in it, there is the promise of warmth and safety and civilization.

White Stuff

White Stuff

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I just peeked at the weather forecast to see what Christmas might have in store and learned that snow showers are predicted for the morning of the 25th. While I doubt this will hold up, we’ve had more snow on the ground this week than in the last two years, 

This morning I awoke to a coating of fresh flakes on yesterday’s hardened ice crust. There’s just enough of the white stuff to flock the holly and dust the deck. And since it’s only 28 degrees outside right now, it might last.

It will be a strange Christmas; that much we know. But wouldn’t it be nice if it was a white one, too?

(I took this photo during Snowmaggedon … not today!)

November Question

November Question

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Warm Novembers confront us with a question: Is it the early darkness that makes the month gloomy — or the cold temperatures? Melville would say the latter, I think, at least he would if we take the famous opening lines of Moby Dick with its “damp, drizzly November in my soul” as proof of where the novelist stood on the matter.

For many of us, though, it’s not just the damp drizzle; it’s also the early darkness, the dying of the light. I saw this first hand in the parakeets yesterday. Lulled into autumnal complacency by the mid-70 temps, I brought the birds out onto the deck to share the glass-topped table with me as I worked. 

They were chattering and happy, doing their best to respond to wild bird calls … until the sun began slanting lower and lower in the sky.  Then, as if on cue, they quieted and calmed, began tucking their heads into their wings. 

Even when it’s warm, the early darkness has its way with us. 

Gathering Rosebuds

Gathering Rosebuds

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The weather gods have given us one more warm day, one more day to walk and bounce and write outside before the cold moves in. It could be 30 degrees cooler tomorrow than it is today.

I can hear the lawnmower outside. Does it only seem more fast and frantic because I’m feeling that way about making the most of this day?

The second bloom roses I’ve been enjoying brought this verse to mind:

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
   Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
   Tomorrow will be dying.