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