One Day in Light

March is slapping us around here in Ohio.  Hey! Spring's here!! Whoops! Snow! Here are the Three Graces at noon today, on my way into town. I wanted to document their buds and flowers coming out so early in March, even though the light was flat and dull.

And here they are at 5:46 pm. Same day. Same place. Somewhat different light. If you don't think that light changes everything, that light is life and love, that light is everything, well, it is. At least it is for me. I raced home to catch this scene, praying under my breath that the light wouldn't leave before I could get to this exact place. This place I've shot dozens of times, this place that is never the same twice.

 

HOW DOES THIS HAPPEN? I don't know. I'm just so grateful that it does.  How lucky can you get, to live on a planet that has skies like this? 

 Before that could happen, though, this had to happen. I went into the store and the sun was out, and the clouds were racing across a cold blue sky. I came out with a full cart and it was blowing a gale, a total horizontal snow whiteout. In the time it took me to unload the cart, my hair, which had been having a pretty good day, was plastered to my skull and dripping. My coat was white with wet snow. I was laughing helplessly because I had no hat, no gloves, and way too little coat.  March, you got me.

 

By the time I got to Fifth Street, the squall was already ending. I could see a sky-blue petticoat under the flannel. This is our beautiful Washington County Library, built on a sacred Native mound. It's a Carnegie library, which means it was built with a $30,000 grant from the Carnegie foundation given January 2, 1913. My father was seven months old, smiling and crowing in his crib. 

In Ohio, 104 public libraries were built from 79 grants (totaling $2,846,484) awarded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York from 1899 to 1915. In addition, academic libraries were built at 7 institutions (totaling $368,445). 

 I'm awfully glad to have a Carnegie library in our town. Grateful to see my tax dollars at work here, continuing the legacy Carnegie started.

 Glad it's still a library, glad it's got books (and computers) and wonderful staff and they hold public programs. The Washington County Public Library, the Ohio River Museum and Campus Martius Museum will host me March 29, telling the story of that unlucky/lucky West Virginia snowy owl in narration and photos. There isn't a room big enough in the library proper to house it, so we're holding it at 7 PM at Campus Martius Museum, Second and Washington Streets in Marietta.  I can't wait! More info here.

Just a few more shots from today, because they're too beautiful not to post. 

 

The Shadow Barn, from another perspective. When I think of all the times I trotted past here with my little familiar, trying to get a shot of both our shadows, I get a little choked up. I remember the foggy morning we saw a whole family of raccoons cross the road here. They reminded me of nothing so much as coatis. I held onto him and we let them pass. I can still feel him trembling, hear him clearing his throat and just barely whining. I can smell his damp ruff.

 

I love the color combo of asbestos shingles and weathered red wood. I love this little machine shed so much.  It looks like something you'd find out on the North Dakota prairie, only it's rotting faster in Ohio.

 

 The sky was just ridiculous. The shed had a spotlight on it, like someone was expecting it to dance.

Click on this one. Click on all of them, please.

 I got out of the car to grab the mail, and almost fell to my knees. For all the days when the gray flannel reigns, for the weeks on end when the sun barely makes an appearance, there will be an hour of golden glory, and it is enough. It's enough.

Snowmageddon Gallery

The present: that seductive, smooth-talking diversion, has impinged itself on me once again. 

We have had Snowmageddon in southeast Ohio, winged by the great winter storm Jonas as he waddled east, hunkered down over West Virginia and Virginia, and buried us all. We got a mere 18" to WV and northern VA's 3' or more. Still, it was a lot of snow for us.

It was beautifully powdery, and it fell right off the tree limbs to the forest floor, and no trees fell across lines, and nobody lost power. It was a New Year's miracle! And to Liam's delight he got Friday AND Monday off school!  

I have lived here in Appalachian Ohio since 1992 and have formed a rock-solid Pavlovian association with BIG SNOW and NO POWER FOR DAYS. So I looked at the weather map, saw the giant blue blob headed our way, and started cleaning the house. I figured I'd do all the things I couldn't do anymore when we lost power. Use the lights, the washer, dryer, dishwasher, vacuum cleaner, that kind of thing. It wasn't "if" we were going to lose power, it was just "when." And we never did lose power.

But I kept at it. Two full days it took me, which is pathetic, but I truly hate cleaning. This is a big house and I move very slowly because I find it all so stultifying. I used to clean once a week when the kids were small. I felt like I had to, but I still don't know how I did it. The difference between 40's and 50's, I guess. Now, I'd far rather write or paint or read or run, and nobody else seems to care, so why should I? But with decreasing frequency I still pull myself together to do it, even as I begrudge the time it takes. Time is my favorite thing, the most precious resource. 

It wasn't so bad, though, because as I cleaned I watched the snow piling up outside, and I felt enormously thankful to be safe and warm and snowed in with Liam. Just grateful to have such a nice roof over our heads, to have a house to clean at all.  We had plenty of food because my inner squirrel had been stockpiling for days before the storm hit. I'd laid in all the bird feed we could need, too, and the first day of the storm I made a quadruple batch of Zick Dough Improved, so we were good.

On the morning of January 24 I finally suited up and headed out to catch some hoarfrost atop the snow. Oh boy oh boy! 

That Japanese maple, once a potted bonsai, is becoming a major landscape force. Big enough to sit under, big enough to walk under, big enough to have chipping sparrows and cardinals nest in it. Ahh. Such a good tree. 

Still feeling appreciative, I walked around to see the once-tiny birds-nest blue spruce I moved from Maryland to Ohio in 1992. Oh my. 

And better yet, two very small crape myrtles in the foreground, come up from seed or root, I know not which, from a beautiful shrub that was killed in the horrid winter of 2013. They came up out of nowhere after two years without a sign of life from the shrub's stump. And bloomed this past summer of 2015. And were true to the original, a rich magenta. HOORAY! May they make it through this winter.

A deer, looking for birdseed. Those thin legs move pretty well through snow. I'd have thought they'd yard up in this much snow, but the meadow was laced with their tracks. I think the fact that the snow was so powdery encouraged them to move about. It's crusty snow deer hate, punching through it with their hooves, the crust cutting their legs.

I purely hated to walk on that clean white sheet in the meadow, but I had to, if I was going to get any photos.

Looking at the junco and sparrow tracks, it suddenly hit me that deep snow actually helps them forage.

For instead of the seedheads being high above their heads, forcing them to jump and flutter, the seeds are right at their level. The birds are 18 inches higher on the surface of that snow, and can simply hop from seed cluster to seed cluster. Beautiful! I loved that revelation, that thought that juncos actually like a deep snow. That it makes finding food easier for them. No wonder we call them snowbirds.

So busy, the tracks of their industry everywhere in the meadow. 

The bluebird box with its baffle was steaming in the sun as the hoarfrost burned off.  It looked eerily like a man with a derby on, breathing. I tried to capture the misty exhalation with two cameras and couldn't. But oh, it was cool. 

I like this shot, for the elements it shows--housing for birds and for us, a baffle to protect against snakes and raccoons; a Virginia pine left just because it was beautiful; my meandering path. At this point I'm tired. Slogging through knee-high snow is work!

Under the same pretty pine. Yes, red is the right color for that house. And I can pretend it's an old barn. Especially when I don't feel like cleaning. Har.

At this point, I'm sufficiently snowblind that I can barely tell what I'm shooting. Which makes for some interesting pictures.

The lacework and tracery of frost and grass and stem and shadow has me in its thrall. 

I turn the camera toward myself and the sun. I can't even see it, the sun is so bright. I'm all warmed up, and have been shedding clothes all the way out the path. No hat, no gloves needed when you're wading through deep snow. A mile walked this way is probably worth three on pavement, from a cardiac standpoint.

No Bacon chaser with me. He wouldn't be caught dead in 18" of snow.

My photos get odder and odder. I can't see what I'm doing very well, but I'm fascinated by the light, and I keep facing into it, like a moth.

This could be another planet...

A junco's snowball, growing a crust of hoarfrost.

Probably time to head toward the house. And when I turn my back to the sun, the blue sky and shadows jump out at me. Oh my! what I've been missing!

And when I got home, Chet Baker, who does not gladly suffer deep snow, came out to run the rat maze I had shoveled him all over the yard. I made little alleys to his favorite spots--the compost pit, the spruces, the feeders, the greenhouse.  I made sure they all connected, and all led to the front door. He came out of the woods so proud of himself, and considerably lighter. It had been a day and a half. It was time.

O noble doggeh o' mine!

Big Bucks. I've Got 'Em.

It was one of those days when the animals and birds came to me, all day long. I have a million more Florida shots but the here and now is tugging at my hem, begging to be honored.

This, February 16 2015, is the first major snowstorm we've had. Unlike the poor beleaguered, smothered Northeast, we've had little snow in southeast Ohio this winter. And I've loved every minute of that.

This is how I feel about snow. 

Not a huge fan of snow. I love it when it's falling and fresh. 

After it turns into boilerplate, not so much.

About six inches now, and still falling gently. It started out fine as drizzle. That's how you can tell it means bidness.

I had a very special visitor in the afternoon, whom I'll tell you about in another post. I shot dozens of photos of her. And then Bill called me to the living room to see what was out the meadow. 

 Ten deer, at least four of them bucks. And not small ones, either.

I was amazed that four still had their antlers. Here, three of them--two eight pointers, and in the middle, a beast.

It occurred to me that they may have been herding up to go find a place to bed down this evening, to make a yard, in case the snow got really deep.

And rutting season being essentially over, the boys were all pals again, and they leave the does mostly alone (though I had a big buck driving a doe around the meadow just a week or so ago).

This buck has very nice tall tines. Eight points.

But there was another who was bigger.

His left antler has six tines! and his right, five.

 We looked on, amazed. A bit tricky to capture both dog and deer in the same exposure, but not as tricky as it was for Chet Baker to leap gently up onto the cedar chest without knocking over either the poinsettia or the beaded zebra from South Africa. Nice work, Little CatDog.

I couldn't take my eyes or lens off that buck.

He reminded me of the stag who appears out of the mist to Bambi, to tell him his mother is dead and he has to go on alone now.

So beautiful out there in our meadow, a visitation.

My favorite shot of him.

He moved slowly to the woods, pausing to run his tines through some low-hanging honeysuckle. Force of habit.

 And inside, the little dog watched.

Those bucks made my day, a day already so special for having Liam home, and then Bill, fleeing his office for the snow, heading home early. And my beloved birds and animals visiting all day long, as if to pay their respects.

A friend of mine wrote me tonight:

I am confident now that visitations in the way of signs, symbols, and assorted expressions of consciousness are real and purposeful. I think the creatures you notice in particular places and at particular times are intended for you. The more you notice, the more will come.

And another friend wrote:

Who knows what form consciousness takes...I will pay even closer attention to the subtexts of your posts from now on . The vast landscapes you paint are not lost on me.

I am grateful for these people, who understand, who notice the subtle things, who attach import to the seemingly random small graces that rain on us every day.

Mood Indigo

Because I had been sitting all day and seemed a bit off, the babies lured me out on an evening walk. Since they haven't had school for almost three weeks, they have been doing that regularly, walking me like one would an old stiff dog. Denied my daily exercise regime by unrelenting ice and snow, I lose my go-go spark, and they help me get it back.

We were losing light steadily as we walked toward the cemetery. Chet checked for Demon, his pal he loves to bite, but opted not to snowfish through the white yard to see him.

He's wearing an old sweater that helps keep him from freezing solid. 

Anything you hold up high is fair game for a Boston terrier, even a giant snowplank. Gimme that!

The lazy curve of the haymeadow hill, painted violet by the dying sky.

Where the deer go up to check the neighbor's hopper feeder. 

At length we reached the cemetery, where two arbor vitaes, mortally damaged by the fire that burned the collapsing Methodist church down, still stand watch. They are taking their time dying, and I'm glad of it. Hawks and bluebirds, woodpeckers and titmice love to sit in their dead tops.

It was quite a wade for the small dog.

Anyone making a snow angel is in danger of being sat upon. Including Liam.

Your sister is a much more salubrious surface than 8" of snow.

Aided by wind, a little flag makes silent arcs in the snow. 

On the way home, I asked my iPhone to remember me this lonesome scene, and it obliged. I was pleased that it picked up the moon and a couple of planets as well.

We got home, I started to do last prep on dinner, and Bill came in. "Could you guys suit up and help me?" Our ice-packed driveway had had its way with the company van. It was both mired and high-centered just off the driveway. The whole family tried very hard to push, dig and pull the van out of the mire, but in the end only our dear neighbor Sherm and his tiny but powerful Kubota tractor could free it. By then it was 9:30 PM and we, famished, fed upon a thoroughly dessicated, nay, cremated chicken carcass that had been perfectly juicy and delicious at 7:30. An unexpected bonus that we discovered upon coming back in the house was that the van's tires had spun hot mud on me and Bill, from head to toe. Parka washing time.

Truly a winter to remember. Here is a photo of a large, unidentifed anthropoid ape smashing its way back from the compost pit through the dismal, pocked boilerplate masquerading as snow upon our smothered yard. It is not wearing pants because its wife made it take them off so she could throw them in the washer. 

The morning aftermath. That car was not going to go anywhere without a chain and a tractor. 

This winter has given us great beauty, very little school, and no small measure of privation. We are ready for it to pack up its weapons and go home. Scenes like this one notwithstanding. 

We walk to this place
where blue hills meet steely sky
The mood's indigo.
Before we get back
darkness will fall in the woods.
Snow lights our path home.