brant and horned larksDecember 11, 2005
Brant and horned larks are sure signs of winter and we saw plenty of both of them at Colt State Park this afternoon. The brant numbered in the hundreds -- maybe 300 to 400 -- and the horned larks were the usual flock of about 10. The brant got into this weird marching thing where they would land on the grass and then start walking en masse across perfectly good open grass to some other area of open grass. It was like watching a parade. The horned larks were far less organized. They scattered in all directions every time a car went by on the road or a person walked by on the path or for no reason at all or for reasons only apparent to horned larks.
It's not like I need to see winter birds to know it's winter. There is the small matter of the 15 inches of show at my house and the white-out conditions I encountered when I stupidly went out to buy lunch on Friday. OK, it was just ordinary snow when I left the office and when I purchased said lunch at Whole Foods but before I got back to the office the wind picked up to like 70 mph and the visibility dropped to zero. Somehow I made it back to the office without being able to see the road. Later in the afternoon the folks who decided to leave work at the height of the storm got trapped because a tractor trailer jacknifed at the entrance to the parking lot. It blocked the whole street. Phones started ringing with calls from people telling us they were stuck. Those of us who looked at the live radar on the Internet quickly realized we would be better off if we waited it out because the storm was moving really fast. By 6:00 PM the stars were out. Some of the roads were even plowed. And a giant tow truck had pulled the jacknifed tractor trailer away from our entrance and onto the parking lot of a conveniently vacant building (I knew the slow economic recovery had an upside.)
Naturally the parking lot at my condo was not plowed nor were the walkways shoveled or anything. Somehow I never thought about exactly how much 15 inches of snow is until I had to walk through it to get into my house. I am 60 and 3/4 inches tall (my driver's license gives me another quarter inch but I'm being scrupulously honest here). So 15 inches is approximately one quarter of my height. It is not easy for a 60 and 3/4 inch tall person to walk in 15 inches of snow. Not at all. And then there is the small matter of the 12 foot tall snowbank that the plow conveniently placed in front of my back walkway. Just getting into my house turned into an extreme sport.
Boy was I glad to leave on Saturday for Rhode Island where there was considerably less snow and a tuba concert. Enough tubas will make anything better. Saturday night tubas playing Christmas music and Sunday's march of the brant and all of a sudden things don't seem quite so bad.
Today's
Reading
Down the Bay by Wallace P. Stanley
This
Year's Reading
2005 Booklist
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Copyright © 2005, Janet I. Egan