Circling round a season winding down

In an effort to wrap up our Christmas shopping (ha!?), we traveled a large North-South loop through the Eastern edge of the Twin Cities metro area this morning. Among other things, it reminded us of how much we've come to enjoy living where we do. For the most part, the country around us is a mix of wood lots, small farms (plus the Kelley Land and Cattle Company), villages, small towns and moderate sized cities. And then there's Woodbury, what can we say?

this pair of bald eagles were perched on Kelley Land, Dec. 2015

Photo by J. Harrington

Traveling our loop, at one point we noticed a very large flock, or several smaller flocks,  of turkeys pecking and scratching through a corn field somewhere around Bayport or Lakeland. Later, we saw numbers of geese hanging sitting  and standing around what used to be open water on Lake Elmo. Alas, we also saw a small flock of crows feeding on a road-killed whitetail somewhere in Northern Washington County.

There are other noteworthy signs of the hardy, intrepid, foolish? wildlife that inhabit the region. Ice anglers, and their portable ice houses, have sprouted on several smaller lakes, including Moody Lake in Chisago Lake Township and Bone Lake in Scandia.

Sigurd is our symbol of a North Country Christmas spirit

Photo by J. Harrington

Some of the harvested corn fields were bi- and tri- and di-sected with deer tracks. Others were fringed by snowmobile tracks. A few cornfields haven't yet been harvested. Increasing snow cover and the forecast cold spell will, no doubt, cause some of the remaining waterfowl to move on further South as food and open water gradually disappear. Actually, more farm fields are disappearing, "permanently," as farms are sold and subdivided. We saw a fair amount of evidence of that kind of disappearance too. The housing market is obviously heating up despite the cooling weather.

Remember Joni Mitchell's haunting line from her [1969] song "Big Yellow Taxi?"

Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
Till it's gone 

We find ourselves wondering if the illustrious and highly talented Ms. Mitchell had, perchance, read Richard Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America [1967, written 1961] before she wrote "Taxi." As far as we know, Ms. Mitchell never produced an entire Christmas album, although she often provided us with the "fresh truth of children."

Noel

Anne Porter

When snow is shaken
From the balsam trees
And they’re cut down 
And brought into our houses 

When clustered sparks 
Of many-colored fire
Appear at night 
In ordinary windows 

We hear and sing
The customary carols 

They bring us ragged miracles
And hay and candles 
And flowering weeds of poetry
That are loved all the more
Because they are so common 

But there are carols
That carry phrases 
Of the haunting music
Of the other world 
A music wild and dangerous
As a prophet’s message 

Or the fresh truth of children
Who though they come to us
From our own bodies 
Are altogether new
With their small limbs
And birdlike voices 

They look at us
With their clear eyes 
And ask the piercing questions 
God alone can answer.

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