Ponderings from the depths of winter ...

The dogs and I are just lazing about in a warm, sunfilled corner of the house. I spent some time this morning checking the photo archives. There's documentation that some of February, some of the time, is considerably nicer than the current cold spell we're experiencing.

swans and open water, 2/21/17, Carlos Avery WMA

Photo by J. Harrington

There's also evidence that some years, maybe even still this year, we get lots more snow than we've seen thus far this season. Meanwhile, the dustings we've received the past couple of nights certainly refute the old saying about "it's too cold to snow."

snowstorm 2/20/19

Photo by J. Harrington

Although we are currently highly unambitious and unmotivated to get outside and do anything, we know that Spring will arrive eventually. Snow will become runoff. Frozen ponds, lakes and rivers will become open water. Waterfowl will return and bare branches will again open leaf buds and turn green. Meanwhile, black bears are being born in their dens. Owls are beginning to mate. Soon it will be time for wolves to start mating season. All of which are more likely to occur before politics begins to make sense or enough humans begin to act as if they had any common sense. We can but hope and pray for better days. Meanwhile, life goes on.

Winter

By Billy Collins

A little heat in the iron radiator,

the dog breathing at the foot of the bed,

and the windows shut tight,

encrusted with hexagons of frost.

I can barely hear the geese

complaining in the vast sky,

flying over the living and the dead,

schools and prisons, and the whitened fields.

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