Carve, walk, print

Well, I've managed to keep this year more or less on track for three whole days already! Amazing! Tomorrow I'll hang my first show of the new year, at the Salida Regional Library as part of our local Art in Public Spaces program. The linocuts are already stacked in the car, ready for the two block drive to the library. (It seems so ridiculous to drive two blocks... we keep saying that we need a wagon. Not that an entire show's worth of framed work would FIT in a wagon. But it's a good idea...)

In between art-packing and laundry-doing I managed to get the third color down on the new lino. This was the most laborious carving of the piece (read: most material to remove from the block), and I'm only anticipating 5 colors, so golly! It's half finished already. Such a deal. My goal is to get it done by the end of this week... which seems easy enough until I start looking at the other items on this week's schedule. (Show to hang, illustrations to work on, and if the weather holds out, a Darling Man to take on a secret adventure as part of his holiday gift.) I'd keep my fingers crossed, but that would preclude getting any carving done...

Just in case a print of snow and shadows isn't chilly enough for you, here are a couple of little shots from our walk today. Yes, of course... I'm still looking "underfoot" for the series... although can you imagine trying to do either of these as linos? I'm tempted, but not yet completely out of my mind.

Trying not to feel smug

But it ain't working. According to the WeatherBug station at our local middle school, it was 62 F here today. Whilst our friends in the north and east are making videos about the way hot water behaves when sprayed into ambient temps of -15 F, we are walking around the lake sans jackets. By the time we got back home from a walk this afternoon, both the DM and I were sporting short sleeved shirts.

At the lake goldeneye and wigeon were making "hey, baby" noises at each other. A dipper under Spiral Drive bridge was vocalizing so exuberantly that we were compelled to scramble down through Russian olive shrub to the river edge to confirm it was a single bird. Little flocks of chickadees seemed to have their knickers in a right bundle over who-knows-what. Dabblers were dabbling, divers were diving... even the nap-inclined seemed to be doing so with a certain luxuriant enthusiasm.

The problem with a surfeit of fabulous weather and tantalizing bird behavior is that we're all going to be mighty unhappy when the obligatory frigid February weather moves in. With all this raucous revelry going on it's difficult to avoid thoughts of spring and green, even when the only non-coniferous green to be found is in hardy watercress crops in protected ditches.

It seemed only right to temper all this giddiness with a little dried-plant reality check. Which I did. And now I'm going to go check on my inventory of green ink and green paint. Just so I'm ready. You know. Eventually. In April. Maybe May. They're just around the corner. Aren't they?

Hunting & gathering

Finally got out for a goodly walk this afternoon, despite some wind and cold. I'm still hunting for a new linocut image idea that will hold my attention long enough to get the print done! I've plenty of ideas, but I'm in one of those moods where I'm dismissing most concepts as too complex, too abstract, or too boring... no happy middle ground. (sigh) Basically I'm being completely uncooperative with myself. It's not pretty.

One of the things I'm looking for is an image to "go with" High Tide Detritus. I like how that image turned out, and I like the idea of doing more with the natural "litter" under my feet. I'm intrigued by the idea of pine cones and needles... or stones... and snow... or ice... and leaves... and bones... and sticks... and....

See my problem?

I'm sure I'll get it sorted out here before TOO much longer, but in the meantime... here are some groovy ideas I collected whilst stalking the river edge with my camera. Will they make good linos? Hard to say. At the moment they all look like a bit of a carving nightmare, don't you agree?

Change of perspective

You know, in "the olden days," BDM (Before Darling Man), I used to relish holidays as a GREAT time to catch up on work. Two or three days in which I knew I wouldn't be interrupted by clients, or pretty much anyone else... it was perfect! I'd work all weekend, send everything off to clients on the last evening, and THEN (maybe) take a day off when everyone else went back to work.

Those halcyon* days seem to be in the past. The DM actually likes to do stuff other than work on the weekends. I don't get it! But I admit that our little jaunts on Monday were fun.

First thing in the morning we went to the top of "S" Mountain (AKA Tenderfoot Hill), the iconic conical peak directly across the river from town. It's always good to get a different view of the place one lives, I think. If you knew where to look, you could see our house from here.

I used my camera to take a little video of the panorama, but we're waiting for the DM to put a new soundtrack on it. Right now all you can hear is the ear-splitting whoosh of the wind through tiny microphone.

After that we popped home to grab some snacks and headed just out of town to Castle Gardens. This is a fabulous little area of BLM land... great rock formations and ancient junipers among the piñon pines. Unfortunately it's also crossed in many places by the tracks of dirt bikes. (sigh) We heard some further up the canyon but never actually saw them. Otherwise we had the place to ourselves.

So now it's back to work like everyone else. I spent a goodly chunk of yesterday writing text for a new set of interp signs, and will do so again today. I've also been charged with a little more photo research for the fine team at National Audubon, and of COURSE I want to finish the little bitty linocuts I started last week. Here, a monarch and a damselfly... image size 2.5 x 2.5, editions of 15.

(* Hey, bird-types... we should be using this word more often in our daily conversations. It has to do with kingfishers, ya know. )

Entertainment on a shoestring

My friend Debby over at Drawing the Motmot noted that Garrison Keillor has a thing or two to say about how we will entertain ourselves in the $4.00+ per gallon, post-SUV era. As Debby is a fine banjo player, she enjoyed his prediction that banjo sales would increase.

Not being a banjo player (but being happy that adding a musician to my household has turned out to be a good environmental decision), what struck me most were Mr. Keillor's comments about community design:

".... it’s also showing most of us that we live in communities whose design is based on the assumption of cheap gasoline — big lots with backyard privacy make for a long drive to the grocery store.

In the big old-fashioned city neighborhood, if you’re bored in the evening, you just stroll out the door and there, within five or 10 minutes, are a newsstand, a diner, a movie theater, a palm reader, a tavern with a bartender named Joe — whatever you’re looking for."

They reminded me again how fortunate I am to be living where I am: in a small town with more than the usual share of artists, musicians, and community-minded shop proprietors. The DM and I can (and do) walk to groceries, coffee, cafe, bakery, pub, bookstore, workout, bank, post office, library, mountain hikes, movies, theater, and river. I can't bring myself to complain about fuel prices, in part because I saw first hand how our prices were artificially low more than 20 years ago, during my first trip abroad. But I'm also not really feeling this particular pinch very hard.

When the DM came over to Crested Butte for a couple of days last week, he lamented that he had just spent nearly $50 to fill the tank on his car. But he did so with a twinkle in his eye, and I knew he would laugh when I pretended exasperation - "Well, yes, but DARling! It's the first time you've been to a gas station since you arrived in APRIL."

We're not without our financial worries here in the Heart of the Rockies, we're artists and musicians, after all! Housing prices are out of reach, natural gas prices went up 23% last month. And of course those rising fuel costs make transportation of all the rest of our goods more expensive. But we're happy that our community design allows us to use our feet to reduce our footprint at least a little- and to entertain ourselves with art, music, friends, and an abundance of natural beauty just by walking out the door.

I'm sure there's a bad pun here about a life that's hard on the soles but good for the soul, but I will refrain from using it. I need to walk over to the post office.

Music at the bandshell, Riverside Park
Entertainment via foot and tush

The spring crazies

Chock-a-block with doings and goings on, these days have been.

First... a rush job for a client, two big (48" x 42" each) interp panels to be completely finished in 10 days! Crazy! So I spent the last two days working on this background painting, which will go across both panels. (Ultimate size, 48" x 84", although I am painting it at less than that.) I'm still waiting for text, and then it's on to the rest of the design process. I've got the whole shebang roughed out already, so it shouldn't be TOO bad.


I spent the end of last week wrapping up another client project... this one an interp display about birds for the local office of the US Forest Service. It was a fun job to do, since I got to write about the local avifauna and paint a nice scene of the Arkansas River. We are so fortunate here to have a great variety of habitats coming together: river riparian, pinyon-juniper woodlands, montane forest, sub-alpine and alpine tundra. We don't get big shows of shorebirds or gulls, but we get lots of other goodies. This is the main panel, and each of the featured birds is the basis for smaller "callout" panels describing some interesting aspect of local birdlife.


Speaking of which... FINALLY... migrants. Everything is slow this year... about a month behind last year. Last March I was writing about pillaging a catkin-laden tree which is only now showing its flashy tendencies. The tree swallows which arrived March 23 last year didn't show up until April 16! Capistrano we ain't, but I have never been so happy to see the little buggers. We've had a long, long winter.

There have been a couple of nice moments of play mixed in with all the work crazies, though. 'Tis my day-a-year day today, and despite my tendency to not participate in such an event.... something always happens. My friends Mark and Brenda called yesterday, for example, offering a motorcycle ride on a beautiful day. I'd spent most of the day chained to the drawing table, so an hour's break sounded great. And it was! It had been many years since I'd been on the back of a motorcycle....

This morning I took a long walk along the usual path, followed by breakfast with my dear friend Jacque. Today's "year birds": snowy egret (mixed in with 56 ibis), Franklin's gull, common yellowthroat, western grebe, pied-billed grebe. Last week's arrivals were black phoebe, tree swallow, barn swallow, yellow-rumped warbler. The passing-through of myriad waterfowl continues. A total 45 feathered species showed themselves during my not-quite-two-hour ramble. Not bad for April at 7,000 feet.

And the icing on this happy birthday cake? Not two hours ago my annoying downstairs neighbors pulled out of the drive in their motorhome. Oh please oh PLEASE, let them be gone for days! (Expect good news about that situation later in the week. I'm reluctant to say anything until all details are in place... but.... change is a-comin'.)

Sadly, it's back to work for me now, but I had a great morning and am anticipating a lovely evening... so I'll concede a few hours of labor. All in all, a good day!

Okay, so the autumn isn't COMPLETELY over

Views from the trail this morning. Snow tonight, I think.

It's been snowing on Monarch Pass all day.

I tried to bring home an interesting piece of sticker-y bush to draw this morning, but DUH! It stuck to my gloves and disintegrated in a pile of seeds. (sigh)

Warning label

My friend Brenda hangs a poster in her home workspace that says, "It could be that the purpose of your life is to serve as a warning to others," or some such interpretation of that theme.

And that's a little how I feel about today. FINALLY this morning I got out for the long-neglected walk, and OOPH. The season has changed and I missed the entire process! Travel and work and an unfortunate encounter with an ice-covered step kept me either on the run or under an ice pack for most of the last month, and while I was away my familiar landscape got an extreme makeover. One portion of "my" trail has been scraped away by hospital-constructing bulldozers. Another has been widened and covered with new gravel. Yet another has been denuded: large clumps of willow taken out around the lake to make room for more fishermen. (I guess.)

The swallows are completely gone and the juncos have come down from the high country. Many trees are completely bereft of leaves. And I am chagrined that I wasn't there to note the change in gradual increments instead of great swaths. (This is the part about serving as a warning to others: do not let doing interfere with being!)

My one consolation is that the "good winter ducks" have started to arrive: ring-necks, gadwall and wigeon are in. A few grebes, a few mergansers.-- and one handsome wood duck. Sands Lake's lone summer coot has 8 or 10 buddies now, and an osprey haunts Frantz Lake before continuing south.

The milkweed has transitioned from pink flowers to brown husks, so I brought a chunk in from the trail to draw this afternoon. My original intention was just to make a pencil drawing, but the temptation of a brush close at hand was too great. I'm not sure I like the drawing as well with the color... but there you have it.

And yes, I'm walking tomorrow- before it starts snowing or something!

Mishmash morning

Just one of those days, I guess.

As I walked this morning, my mind wandered down a half dozen paths... none of which I seem able to map at the present time. So... a visual checklist for when my brain and fingers conspire to create complete sentences.

We had another brief fog event this morning in the wake of more evening rain. There's a story to be told about a waterlogged bin of potting soil, but it's a stinker... literally...


By the time I got around the first lake, the fog seemed to be wandering in aimless blobs (kinda like me)... time elapsed between Photo One and Photo Two? Eh. 20 minutes, I'm guessing.

The story here is that the trees are starting to turn. Yet another example of incomplete childhood nature education, like "Monsoon = India": "Trees turn in the autumn, autumn starts in September."

Swallows. I have lots of thoughts about swallows. Some I've even articulated before. But not here. And certainly not today.

This here's a cliff swallow. (Photo by Tony Leukering.) Two, maybe three weeks ago the Spiral Drive bridge writhed with them. Today it was silent and still. Erroneous childhood nature knowledge #3: "Birds fly south for the winter, which means they leave in the autumn, which doesn't happen until September." (Tell that to the rufous hummingbirds, whose fall migration brings them through here starting in July. And the Bullock's orioles, which start to clear out about the same time.)

Once I got home I did manage to hold onto a train of thought long enough to put the last color down on the blanketflower lino this morning. I always like seeing the print rack full... makes me think I accomplished something. Maybe.

Oh, wait. Did I say train of thought? My friend Kevin just called. He's on his way to Chama to work on the train.

Chama. That's in New Mexico. I might go to New Mexico myself. Wait, wasn't I talking about walking? It would be a long walk to New Mexico. I wonder if their cliff swallows have left yet?

Hmmmm....

Well. Another interesting little white flower on my walk yesterday. I pulled a chunk of vine that I thought was the flowering form of our wild cucumber vine, but when I made this little study I discovered I was wrong. Instead it seems to be sweet autumn clematis (Clematis terniflora)... a beauty, but an invasive. (sigh) I guess I don't have to feel guilty about dismembering it anymore.

Trail of tears

Maiden's tears, or bladder campion. Silene vulgaris. It's blooming just now along the trail from Frantz Lake to the top of the mesa. One of the many reasons it's good to be home and taking regular walks again.

I can see clearly now...

Opening the window blinds this morning sent me dashing out the door so fast that I left without my binoculars! Last night's rain and this morning's sun combined to create a lovely and rare "temporary fog event" in the valley, and I wanted to be out in it.

The binnies were sorely missed, as the morning was far "birdier" than it's been of late, but I did have my little camera in my pocket.

Part of the reason I nearly sprinted down to the lake was that the back of my mind has been occupied for several weeks with images made by my friend Michael. He caught the valley on a fog-bound morning last autumn and took a series of photos that I just love. The thing was, I couldn't quite describe why. Yes, yes... nice atmosphere. Yes, yes, striking compositions. "Something I might paint." But why?

Eureka! This morning the haze made it all clear. (No, really. I'm serious.)

There before me was a familiar landscape transformed and simplified. The fog isolated a single hill in a complex piñon-juniper slope and suddenly I saw the shape of THAT hill for the first time. Those pesky, attention-demanding mountain peaks? Gone! Rubbed out by a cloud. The mind-boggling profusion of leaves? Smeared to a lovely soft green shape.

Of course, the fog also created a charming soft and subtle color palette. The kind I can appreciate but never, ever pull off successfully either in paint or in ink.

I scribbled the words "isolated landforms" on the back of my hand, and later on a little piece of paper I found in my jacket pocket. (Along with the cryptic notes: BUOR FY, choco rio, catalyst, foreign air, stillborn fawn, no bins.) Make of all that what you will, there is something about pared down, stripped down, fogged down, even desolate landscapes that drops me every single time.

But, as with most atmospheric weather events here in the 300-days-of-sunshine-a-year Center of the Universe, the magic was short-lived. A short climb up from the river to the mesa and I was eliminating the middle ground instead of the background, squinting into crystalline light, and wishing I'd eaten some breakfast before I bolted from the house.

In all, a satisfying walk... bins or no bins.

Time off IS good behavior

Took a walk this morning for the first time in a week. (Ack!) The trail welcomed me back with little treasures.... which I then had to carry home in my outstretched flat palm for almost 2 miles. I wonder what the neighbors thought.

(Note to self: perhaps a small plastic box in your pocket would be a good idea.)

This former monarch looked pretty good for having been stepped on (presumably). Not TOO tattered.

Cathedral willows

Between meetings and workshops and deadlines and goofy weather... not a whole lot of bloggable natural history or art going on around here lately. One day last week my car and I celebrated some milestones together: the car turned its 100,000th mile. I turned significantly more miles than that. We (the car and I) were headed back home from Colorado Springs meetings, so I stopped for a mocha granita to celebrate before turning up Bighorn Sheep Canyon for home. The car will get an oil change. Whoopee!

Yesterday morning it was snowing and raining. (See below.) Miserable. But this morning! (See below also.)

It's always good to get out the day after a storm and see what the wind blew in. Avian arrivals today included hermit thrush, common yellowthroat, a Wilson's warbler.... and some peeps which I am pretty sure were least sandpipers. But, SHEESH. I struggle to ID those little buggers.

At the "peak" of the trail (farthest point from home) I found that the wet snow and wind had pretty seriously battered a large willow tree. Branches and catkins littered the trail, so I carted a chunk home to draw. (You know what a sucker I am for catkins.)

I'm not a particularly good identifier of tree species-- at least not past their obvious family names: pine, willow, cottonwood. This particular tree species may or may not be related to two other large willows near Sands Lake... but in my own personal field guide they are the same. They are enormous, graceful, luminous. They inspire a hush and a reverence and compel me to look up. I dunno what an arborist would call them, but I like think of them as "Cathedral Willows."

Not to be missed

It rained last night. A real, honest-to-goodness, drumming-on-the-roof sort of rain. By the cloud-covered light of day we can see that a scant 1000 feet above Salida they got snow, and it's still precipitating here and there. It's been one of those years where I wish I had tallied how many days have been like this. The tourism board and third grade social studies books say we get 300 days of sunshine out of every 365. Maayyyyyyybe. This year it seems like a stretch.

But, weather or no weather, I daren't miss a morning walk just now. Things are happening out there, and from now until June I will live every indoor moment with the nagging fear that I'm missing something.

Yesterday, for example, was the first black phoebe day of the year. It's only been in the last 3 or 4 years (that we know of) that they've been making regular attempts to breed in the county, so it's nice to see them still enthusiastic about their chosen real estate. About once a year an American avocet passes through here... and that day was also yesterday. (Today? Gone.) The white-faced ibis, on the other hand, are still being coy. They should be here NOW. Today. But so far no sign of them. (Little voice says, "Don't miss them.")

Leaf-out is progressing agonizingly slowly. Rabbitbrush stems are turning green and willow stems are turning yellow and orange. A few of last season's leaves continue to cling stubbornly to branches, but their successors are squeezing past them. Some day soon we're going to wake up and notice the color scale has tipped from gray to green. (Little voice says, "Don't miss it.")

The last mile of my walk is along concrete-paved path, which this morning was littered with thousands of earthworms, stranded overnight in their quest for oxygen above rain-soaked soil. I always find it a little dismaying to come across such scenes, especially for an entire mile of trail. The path was quite dry by the time I climbed the hill and crossed the road to meet it, and most of the beached critters were just so much worm jerky. But since I had to watch where I was stepping anyway (not always one of my greater talents), I kept an eye peeled for any sign of worm locomotion. (Yes, folks... she pinches tree blooms in the dark and rescues beached worms. A Nobel Peace Prize nomination is in the mail, I am sure.)

I'm afraid I didn't find more than 8 or 10 wrigglers in that morbid mile, but at least those decomposers who are not now decompose-ees are back at work in trailside dirt.

Where, now that I think about it, they will probably become bird food.

Still.... that same little voice says, "Glad I didn't miss it."

What the storm brought us

The first 45-bird-species walk of the season. Waves of mountain bluebirds, tree swallows, and juncos. Arrivals? An osprey. A barn swallow. Ruddy duck. Franklin's gull. Ruby-crowned kinglet. A mourning dove. And... joy of joys! Yellow-rumped warblers (both Audubon's and Myrtle ssp.)

The Easter Stick

We woke to a skiff of snow again this morning. The day unfolded in shades of gray, with brief bouts of sunglasses.

I walked anyway, binoculars that are older than I am hung hopefully around my neck, but there was little in the way of excitement to be spied. A nice flight of common mergansers and a pair of cinnamon teal were as dramatic as it got. Oh... and there was one small beaver in a place I don't usually see beavers.

An unusual number of family groups roamed "my" trail... presumably digesting their holiday indulgences. When I noticed hordes of jittery kids in these feral flocks it dawned on me that aside from a virtual trip to an Australian purveyor of Easter Bilbies, I hadn't even seen a single candied critter this season. No bunnies, no chicks. No marshmallow peeps in unnatural colors. No pastel-colored baskets filled with plastic grass. No malted milk eggs. No jelly beans. No chocolate. Have I really been so removed from the rest of the world lately?

Not that I'm complaining, mind you. In fact, I am feeling quite smug about dodging yet another sugar-infused, consumption-driven, bloated, commercial, retail fest masquerading as a holiday. (Don't hold back, Sherrie. Tell us how you really feel.) But I still felt compelled to celebrate the day.

So I did. The trail gave up a lovely piece of twisted old rabbitbrush stem to draw and that seemed sweet enough and holiday enough for me.

Early spring walks: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Friday I decided it was warm enough to declare "first shorts-wearing day of the season." It was a little overcast, so the potential for my exposed pallid limbs to frighten the wildlife seemed slim. Time to take a walk along the river. Wearing shorts seemed like a good thing, and I started a mental tick list of all the fine reasons to be out walking on such a day. Before I made it back home, wearing shorts became a not-so-bright-idea-culminating-in-near-disastrous-idea.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I just came in from another fine early spring walk (no shorts, it snowed yesterday and the wind is chilly today), during which I spent a lot of time thinking about how and why I walk the same route day after day. I've no doubt it's a topic that will get greater attention soon, but for today let's just start with that list of early-season pros and cons:

Good: Red-winged blackbirds in an uproar.
Bad: Clouds of midges. Breathe only through the nose, and do not inhale deeply.
Good: The arrival of tree swallows- can everything else be far behind?
Bad: Time to say goodbye to the winter duck party on Sands Lake.
Good: Ice-free paths, so watching feet not necessary. (*See the Ugly, below.)
Bad: Defrosted dog poop hard to see on those same ice-free paths.
Good: Scolding chipmunks.
Bad: Personal temperature regulation. (Jacket on, jacket off, jacket on, jacket off.)
Good: Increased dawdling potential.
Bad: Work behavior decreases in direct relationship to rise in dawdling potential.
Good: Who wants to work all the time anyway?
Good (and probably the best): That feeling of waking winter-dormant knowledge: Whose song is that? What plant will that green sprout become? When should I look for catbirds? Where will the fox spend sunny afternoons? When will the river turn brown and muddy... and how high will it rise? Will the wild iris come up in the same place? There's a new sense of expectation to a walk just now... because the potential for surprise is high. This territory has been familiar but slow to change for the past few months, and now all bets are off.
Good.
Good.
Good.

As for the Ugly bit... that happened on Friday, and is related to Good Item #3.

At Frantz Lake there are small wooden footbridges over a ditch that runs along the path. I've crossed them hundreds of times. But on Friday I was looking up, not down, when I crossed, and I didn't notice the missing board. At least not until I fell through.

Please recall that I was wearing shorts.

So now my winter-white legs are also sporting red raspberry scrapes and lovely purple bruises. But I didn't break anything, neither on my person nor in my pockets. I did, perhaps, crack my pride ("some observant person YOU are"), but it's better than cracking my head. And I certainly got a surprising new view of my usual route. Welcome spring!

Who needs rodents and shadows?

A spark of deep cobalt landed on a wire fence as I passed yesterday: a male mountain bluebird in all his royal blue finery. It's not unusual to have a few stick around through the winter here (often inspiring a surprised or worried phone call from a tender-hearted observer), but something's definitely afoot. Or a-wing, as the case may be. In the last 24 hours I've had two phone calls and a conversation on the trail which all began with "I just saw a bluebird!"

I remember being quite surprised the first time I learned that migrations labeled "spring" and "fall" really have little to do with either of those calendar designations. (I was well over 30.) As a child I had learned the Universal Truth that "birds fly south for the winter," and at no time since had I received any information to challenge, or at least qualify, that statement.

Why did no one ever explain, for example, that migration is a two-way trip? Sure, the fact that we didn't run out of birds implied that they must also "fly north for the summer"... by why was that deemed the less interesting fact? Why was departure the icon, instead of arrival? And why the implication that nothing noteworthy happened in between?

Sure, there are some quiet moments in the year, but around here owls have already begun nesting preparations. Song sparrows and house finches are singing up a storm. Dippers are chasing each other in the river. Waterfowl are bobbing, stalking, calling, flirting. Bluebirds are appearing on fences. Despite all this, the landscape still looks like winter: ochre and brown and gray as a broken cottonwood branch.

Halfway though my walk I was stopped by a woman ("I saw a bluebird!") who commented on the exuberance of this morning's birdsong. "It's only February," she said, "but doesn't it all seem like it means something?" I could tell she hardly dared to hope-- that she, too, had learned the Universal Truth that said nothing more about bird life and February than "south." "Doesn't it seem a little like... well... sort of like... spring?"

Leaf Litter

It's a little crazy around here just now. House is in an uproar, belongings are in disarray.

I'm moving.

I'm not going far, but it's still chaotic. Time to go for a walk.

We're finally starting to thaw out here. Snow on the trail is squishy rather than squeaky. There are plenty of stubborn ice patches, but today I noticed the distinct tang of damp earth sneaking up from underneath. Not quite a spring thaw sort of smell. But a teasing scent all the same.

Melting snow has exposed piles of last autumn's detritus-- leaves and twigs and stones. Somehow they remind me of the current state of my household: mounds of old papers and heaps of books coming to light as shelves are emptied into boxes. Treasures reappearing from under the bed or behind the closet.

It's too soon, I suppose, to turn my mind toward the changing of seasons, but the promises are there in the returning light and the melting snow. While the earth rearranges itself, ever-so-slowly, I'll have to be content with rearranging my own belongings in a new space. And stuffing my pockets with old leaves now revealed.