Early onset Winter! Early onset Spring?

I know, I know! It's not even Thanksgiving yet and here I am complaining about Winter. Have you seen the forecast for next week? Here's Paul Douglas' version:

from Paul Douglas' November 5, 2019 Weather blog

It's still almost a month until the beginning of meteorological Winter and more than 6 weeks until Winter Solstice, yet even the larger local ponds and smaller lakes, like Higgins, are now ice covered. So, we simply raise the question, and our hopes, if Winter is starting four to six weeks early in a state noted for Winters warming more than Summers, isn't it mildly reasonable to think that Spring might start in late February rather than mid to late May? Just asking for a friend.

December swans, Carlos Avery Sunrise River pools, 2015

Photo by J. Harrington

The Sunrise River pools in Carlos Avery Wildlife Management Area are still open water, although the fringes are freezing up. As of this morning there were still a handful of swan families resting there. It is a real treat to see them and the Canada geese still hanging around. A flock of four geese flew low over the house late yesterday, brightening an otherwise dull and drab and cold Autumn afternoon. If the pools stay open and the swans hang around until early December, as they have in some years past, I promise to limit my complaints about early onset Winter. Plus, I'm beginning to remember and recognize the pattern from more "normal" Minnesota Winters: cloudy day, warmer temperatures; bright sunshine, cold enough to freeze your whatever. We seem to be headed in that direction again. Let's see if next week is close to record cold and bright and sunny.

Cold Poem

by Mary Oliver

Cold now.
Close to the edge. Almost
unbearable. Clouds
bunch up and boil down
from the north of the white bear.
This tree-splitting morning
I dream of his fat tracks,
the lifesaving suet.

I think of summer with its luminous fruit,
blossoms rounding to berries, leaves,
handfuls of grain.

Maybe what cold is, is the time
we measure the love we have always had, secretly,
for our own bones, the hard knife-edged love
for the warm river of the I, beyond all else; maybe

that is what it means the beauty
of the blue shark cruising toward the tumbling seals.

In the season of snow,
in the immeasurable cold,
we grow cruel but honest; we keep
ourselves alive,
if we can, taking one after another
the necessary bodies of others, the many
crushed red flowers.

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