Fishing for answers

The counties just South and Southwest of us are now under a WINTER STORM WARNING until 10 pm tonight. We're under a winter weather advisory. Today is October 20. Meteorological Winter begins December 1. Astronomical Winter begins with Winter Solstice on December 21. Situations such as we are currently experiencing, even in our North Country, are why climate scientists and their communications advisors were severely off base when they came up with the phrases "global warming" and "climate change."

this is what today's snow looks like

Photo by J. Harrington

The photos above and below were taken in mid-February several years ago. There are fewer birds at the feeders today but the rest of the pictures capture the current view from our windows. Aren't we are in the middle of Autumn, not Winter? The weather is not supposed to be doing what it's doing at the moment!

Now that I've got that off my chest, we'll finish today's posting by asking you to go skip ahead for today's poem and then return here to go read this linked article from patagonia: You Call Yourself an Angler? It says much of what I often try to say but does it better. As an enticement, here's a sample:

And yet I see the red hats at fishing shows. I see the T-shirts. I have read about flotillas of boats—fishing boats—parading around with flags praising the carnage. They call themselves anglers? Do they still perceive the world as an endless bounty of resources for the taking? Do they look fondly at images of grinning, cigar-chomping fishermen wearing fedoras standing behind piles of dead steelhead or salmon? Do they think that if we could only make things great again, those fish will magically return?

 

it's coming down almost as hard as a February storm

Photo by J. Harrington

 

Beyond the Red River

By Thomas McGrath

The birds have flown their summer skies to the south,

And the flower-money is drying in the banks of bent grass

Which the bumble bee has abandoned. We wait for a winter lion,

Body of ice-crystals and sombrero of dead leaves.

A month ago, from the salt engines of the sea,

A machinery of early storms rolled toward the holiday houses

Where summer still dozed in the pool-side chairs, sipping

An aging whiskey of distances and departures.

Now the long freight of autumn goes smoking out of the land.

My possibles are all packed up, but still I do not leave.

I am happy enough here, where Dakota drifts wild in the universe,

Where the prairie is starting to shake in the surf of the winter dark. 

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