chickadees

Eleven below zero when I went out to start the Honda this morning. Heard the two note call of the male chickadee for the first time this year. The Cornell lab of Ornithology says that, "the males begin singing in mid-January, and the songs increase in frequency as winter progresses.

powder

While we didn't get as much snow as predicted, we still ended up with about six inches. Because of the cold, the snow was as fluffy as any I can remember. Shoveling the driveway was like shoveling air. It was very windy afterwards with much blowing and drifting, snow flying over the tops of guard rails like ocean spray over the top of a sea wall during a big storm.

Eliza

Another generation on the other side of the creek.

Milky Way

Here's the Milky Way Farm in Ira, Vermont around 5:45 AM. Speaking of the Milky Way, saw the constellation Scorpius rising up above the Taconics in the east on this walk. Scorpius is a summer constellation. It was nice to see it!

this

Sometimes nothing need be said.

Venus

Driving home the other night, and saw a bright light along the western horizon. It was the planet Venus, unmistakable. Venus has been a morning star, and while I've seen it, it hasn't happened often. Then it became invisible, lost in the glare of the sun. It had finally returned as the evening star, and I was happy to see it. Like the return of an old friend.

everywhere at home

I received a trail camera for my birthday. On Saturday John helped me put it up back in the woods. I hear there are bobcats back there, and I'd love to get photographic evidence of that. A friend at work gave me a feathered lure that he said would attract them. Yesterday morning about 5:45 I headed up the hill to put it up. It was still dark, Jupiter leading the constellation Leo westward through the morning sky, ice crunching underfoot. I got lost in the woods, but eventually made it to the camera, and put up the lure. I stopped for a moment to see if I could hear anything. Nothing. The silence was deafening, just like it was at times on the Allagash. There's the feeling of being smothered, covered by a wooly blanket of silence. The sun was coming up over the Green Mountains as I headed back down the hill towards home.
Rise free from care before the dawn, and seek adventures. Let the noon find thee by other lakes, and night overtake thee, everywhere at home.
Walden
Henry David Thoreau

slippery

Snow on top of rain on top of ice made for terrible road conditions yesterday. The ride to work was bone-rattling. The Rutland area was essentially one large skating rink. Spreading salt on the walkway, and sand on the driveway at home. Walking on what remained of the snow rather than on the plowed areas which were much more slippery.

clouds

Snow overnight. It slithers behind cars on the road like white anacondas. Smoke from wood stoves accumulating in the Ira valley. Clouds as mother-of-pearl.

whoosh

One of the most changeable  aspects of winter is the interplay between the car windshield in the morning, and the elements. Some days it's clear. Some days just the thinnest coating of frost. One other days there can be a crusty coating of ice. The coatings of snow can either be icy which have to be scraped away, or they can almost be like ice cream which slides off the windshield like an egg from a teflon pan. The car can be coated with the fluffiest of snow which disappears with a whoosh almost immediately after the car starts moving.

snowflakes

Sunny and cold. Single snowflakes falling slowly out of a blue sky.

12/11/09
Dark coming to work today, 19 degrees. Almost two years ago I was walking over to production in the snow. Individual flakes were drifting slowly out of the sky. I noticed that some of the flakes were spinning, like a propeller. As always, it was very exciting for me to observe something new in the natural world. While I have seen snow spinning out of the sky since then, I have never seen that "propeller" effect in exactly the same way.
It is dark now when I leave work, but the parking lot is illuminated. On Monday night the snow was falling slowly out of the sky. I stopped to look for spinning snowflakes. I figured that if I was able to look at a flake high enough above me and follow it all the way down, I might see it spinning.
So there I was on the walkway at work, staring up into the sky. Don't really know for how long. Suddenly I noticed a couple of co-workers walking by me on the way to their cars. They didn't say anything, but gave off that "you're really weird, Jim" aura that Shawn does so well. I panicked, and quickly opened the door to my car except that it wasn't my car. It was the Tuttle company car, a Honda Accord. I made my way to my Honda Civic, and opened the door except that it was actually Shirley's car (which looks a lot like mine). I finally limped across the parking lot to my car and drove home. Never did see any "spinners." Like Joni Mitchell said, " Something's lost, but something's gained in living every day."

squeak

Recent snow sticking to the wheel wells. Squeak of snow/ice against rubber. Emptying out the ash bucket along a fence line in the back. Animal tracks in the snow.

perennially young

Woods Pond 

Nevertheless, of all the characters I have known, perhaps Walden wears best, and best preserves its purity. Though the woodchoppers have laid bare first this shore, and the rail-road has infringed on its border, and the ice-men have skimmed it once, it is itself unchanged, the same water which my youthful eyes fell on; all the change is in me. It has not acquired one permanent wrinkle after all its ripples. It is perennially young.

Walden

Henry David Thoreau

here goes

Snowing lightly this morning. Sometimes the direction of the storm can be determined by the snow stuck to the sides of trees. People pulling windshield wipers away from the windshields on their cars. I think it's to keep them from sticking. I've always thought the depth of winter occurred between my birthday & Allyn's birthday. Here goes.

lighter

This morning the temperature is 15 degrees. Yesterday is was -11. Road salt obscuring vision on the ride to work yesterday. I stopped at a convenience store to clean it off, but the windshield washer fluid was frozen in the pails. The Otter Creek was frozen. And yet, when I got to the mall at the usual time for the morning walk, it seemed a little bit lighter.

mind of winter

Thermometer at -11degrees this morning.

One must have a mind of winter

To regard the frost and the boughs

Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time

To behold the junipers shagged with ice,

The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think

Of any misery in the sound of the wind,

In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land

Full of the same wind

That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,

And, nothing himself, beholds

Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

The Snow Man

Wallace Stevens

colder

Fourteen degrees this morning, and supposed to get much colder. Taking Christmas cards down from the door to my office at work. When walking on the crossroads on really cold days, have to brush the tears out of my eyes. Glasses fogging up when coming in from the cold.

clanging

Full moon, the "Wolf" moon, shining brightly this morning. Yesterday cold Arctic air was ushered in on a brisk northwest wind. Pine trees sighing outside my office, traffic signs rattling in the breeze, flags totally unfurled. The clanging of metallic clasps against the flagpoles made me think of the masts of wooden ships on stormy seas.
The winds which passed over my dwelling were such as sweep over the ridges of mountains bearing the broken strains, or celestial parts only, of terrestrial music. The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation in uninterrupted, but few are the ears that hear it.
Walden
Henry David Thoreau

food & fun

We took a hike out to Wallingford Pond with Doug & Kim on Saturday. Afterwards had food & fun around the warmth of their wood stove. Who says you can't have fun in Vermont in January?

early

I have been getting up early in the morning to walk. It was 15 degrees the other morning with very small snowflakes more floating than falling under the outside lights. The light from the windows is blazing in the house when I return; rectangles within rectangles.
What is the course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, or the best society,  or the most admirable routine of life compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen?
Walden
Henry David Thoreau