Out of the deep freeze

It's with no small sense of chagrin that I admit my delight in the arrival of a "real winter like the old days" has worn dangerously thin. We've been in negative Fahrenheit for a ridiculously long time, and for the last several days it has been outrageously windy. You know the kind: relentless, howling, bitter.

But today the gift of that wind arrived: temperatures above freezing, calm and clear skies. I took a little walk for the first time in many days, not around the lake but to the Salida Café, where I had lunch and a leisurely contemplation of the week ahead. Friends from Colorado Springs arrived unexpectedly to give their stamp of approval to my new digs. I opened the front windows and let in some fresh air. I put the remaining moving boxes into the shed.

In the spirit of defrosting I pulled a little horned lark out of the Hotpoint (funny name for a freezer, come to think of it) and gave it some time on the drawing table. From here it will go off to the bird observatory and later to the museum... but for today I got to wonder over it all by myself. Subtle little things they are. Delicate. Not my usual forté. But it definitely felt like a return to "normal" to spend a Sunday afternoon with NPR and my paintbrushes.

In the week ahead it's fish and canyons and vintage LIFE magazines for me (the latter the business of friends, check out 2Neat Magazines). I'm twitchy to get some new linocuts going, too. Exhibitions loom! There's a painting of trees and shadows in a half-started state... but I've temporarily lost my enthusiasm for winter scenes. Go figure. Maybe instead I'll paint that happy groundhog whose absent shadow seems already to have spurred the shift of seasons. At least for today.