Tag: winter

Categories
Environment Writing

Ice on the Lakes

Ice Skates on a Shelf

On early morning walkabout the moon and stars were out, casting silvery light on me and everything.

Yesterday a thin layer of ice rested on the lakes, its mirrored surface perfect for skating if it thickens. Based on the forecast, we’ll see more open water soon.

When our daughter was a grader and the lake froze we’d don ice skates and cut a path all the way to the other shore. When snowmobiles plowed by we could feel the ice moving up and down taking us with it. We keep the skates on a shelf in our garage.

We live in a cold middle place where it’s not quite winter and not warm enough to work long outside. Our attention turns inward and to the possibilities of next year.

The best part of the coming holidays is people engage in things. A calm quiet falls over the Johnson County Lake District. If it were snowing one could hear flakes fall.

It’s a time for planning and writing here in Big Grove. What few fresh vegetables are left in the ice box will soon be eaten up… well, except maybe the turnips. I’ve been watching videos of Indian street vendors making gigantic woks of chicken fried rice. There’s a tub of leftover rice and plenty of eggs so I’ll try that for lunch or supper. I forget eggs are chickens.

And so it goes. Vonnegut taught us death can be absurd, tragic and predictable. It seems mostly random and will eventually take us all. I’d like to get back out on the ice and cut its clear, smooth surface in long figure eights. I’d watch fish swim through the ice and hope the crazing wouldn’t result in my going to live with them. Not yet anyway.

The hope of this holiday season is we can do positive things next year. Isn’t that always the case? So it goes, and here we go. Gliding along the surface until we take a plunge, hoping for a resurgence of living each moment as best we can.

That’s optimistic. Increasingly, that’s who I want to be, who I am.

Categories
Environment Writing

Snow Fell

Snowstorm
Snowstorm

Snow fell as I drove home on Mehaffey Bridge Road through the lakes—a crystalline, sparkling snow. The wind blew as the sky darkened with imminent nightfall. I had turned the radio off.

I passed a frozen pond where a herd of deer and a flock of wild turkeys browsed—for what I couldn’t discern. A bald eagle flew overhead while entering the lane to our house. What other wildlife existed in the winter landscape went unnoticed, obscured by three historic species.

It is a time of change. This morning there is no Iowa City Press Citizen as the newspaper returned to a Monday through Saturday issue. They had been doing a brief cover, then inserting another Gannett Company paper, Des Moines Register, inside. Today the county seat is again without a daily newspaper.

That’s not to say there isn’t news. It’s just that people get news from a lot of other sources, including talking with neighbors and friends in person and over electronic media. Since I began writing for newspapers, I have read ours more. Despite the informative stories found inside each issue, news and news writing are not what they were, and the Monday issue is frequently quite thin. I predict newspapers will survive, but they compete for eyeballs in a way that has changed and continues to change. The economics of competition has led to less news coverage in newspapers and everywhere as we focus on the obvious.

I arrived home and turned the radio on to A Prairie Home Companion. That has changed too. One wonders how long it will continue once Garrison Keillor moves on.

Thinking about the mango-orange spread I bought last week, I put two tablespoons in a dish, added four tablespoons of home made salsa, mixed them together, and opened a bag of organic tortilla chips for a welcome home snack. Jacque was at work and not expected for a couple of hours.

The sweet taste of the mango came first, then the heat of capsaicin. It was crunchy, sweet, salty and spicy all at once. A perfect example of what living in these times means. We want it all at once.

We don’t often linger in falling snow to see what else is there. I’m certain it’s more than deer, turkeys and eagles.

Categories
Home Life

Snowfall

Imagination can better capture the actuality of falling snow. Better than my smartphone, or camera. Better than words on a page or screen.

Falling snow is.

That is enough.

Categories
Environment

Sunrise on Snow

Sunrise
Sunrise

LAKE MACBRIDE— Snow lies on the north side ground near the house, but not for long. The long winter is over, and once the ground thaws, spring will truly have arrived.

There are signs.

I walked the long ditch in front of our property to pick up a discarded can and newspaper. The ground was matted by the heavy snows, and sandy from snow pushed from the road by the contractor. It was also lined with acorns missed by wildlife. The hopeful sign that new Bur Oak trees will be possible— but not here, where I’ll put them under the tree for squirrels and deer to consume, if they wish.

When I arrived at the warehouse yesterday, the aisles were crammed with pallets of yard and garden goods, waiting placement before members arrived. The seedlings I planted indoors are doing okay, although the lettuce is not germinating as well as broccoli and kale. There will be more planting this week.

A retired U.S. Army soldier has been posting a letter to the editors of several newspapers around the state regarding the Keystone XL pipeline, and how we need it for national security reasons. I’ll believe that when the refineries re-tool to handle the 3 million barrels of light sweet crude being exported each day resulting from production in the Bakken and Eagle Ford formations, and in West Texas.

So begins another day in Big Grove— a place beaten down by winter, but ready for spring’s renewal.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Placeholders

By This Planting I Declare Winter is Over.
With This Planting, Winter is Over.

Categories
Environment

Placeholders

Icicle Sunrise in Solon
Icicle Sunrise at the Newspaper Office

Categories
Home Life

On the Mend

Winter Storm
Winter Storm

LAKE MACBRIDE— It has been a day of staying busy indoors. The driveway is loaded with snow, and without any need to leave the property, we didn’t. Tomorrow is the big dig to get ready for work and a trip to the grocery store, but not today.

There was some kitchen work. I brought the last of the fall apples upstairs, setting aside some for baking, and made apple sauce of the rest. The Winecrisp and Gold Rush apples were past their prime, but stored well. I also made a pot of winter soup which is simmering as I type. The malady about which I wrote Saturday is on the mend. What I know is health care is about staying healthy, and I’m working on that.

The good news is I feel well enough to start reading again and picked out a book. By tomorrow I hope to be ready to wield a shovel and dig the way out to the road that leads to town.

Categories
Home Life

A Regular Winter

Iowa Winter
Iowa Winter

LAKE MACBRIDE— Iowa is having a regular winter. By that I mean the cold temperatures and snow resonate with winter memories from grade school. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, it was nothing to bundle up and walk to school in 20 below zero weather. It was accepted as another part of life in Iowa. Not so much any more.

With the advent of radio, television, the Internet and mobile phone mass messaging, information and opinions about the weather are easy to disseminate. Opinions, like a two hour school delay, or cancellation because of inclement weather, blast forth to citizens with a clear and present danger. Keep the kids safe, it’s too cold outside.

It’s hard to argue with taking precautions so children don’t get frostbitten toes and fingers. At the same time, I don’t believe my parents were any less concerned than today’s parents when they tied a scarf around my face so tightly that my neck got stiff, and sent me through the subzero weather for a several blocks walk to school. Something else has changed.

Tempted to insert comments about the nanny state that regulates behavior so as to mitigate liability should some child be hurt in the cold, that’s not where I’m going. School administrators have a job to do, and one hopes they are doing the best they can.

This cold weather is clear evidence of the effects of global warming, just as the weird winters of recent memory, early springs and droughts have been. Not going there either, although there’s a lot I could say.

On this 14 below zero morning, I’m remembering my college anthropology teacher June Helm, and her lectures about working with indigenous people in the Northwest Territories. How people lived in a climate we recognized, but seemed so different.

They made lives grounded in their environment, and what was available. It was something hard to emulate then, when we were used to availability of a wide variety of goods at the end of nascent global supply chains. Our lives seemed so abundant and protected compared to what we now call the First Nations Helm discussed. Their lives were spare, different, diverse, and resilient. That seems relevant.

The anthropology department at the University of Iowa was just getting started when I was in college. I was an undisciplined student who received a low grade. Nonetheless, I learned we needn’t distance ourselves from the shivering cold, but can embrace it. We can make a life in it. Importantly, if within a circle of family and friends, we are unaware of what others take for granted, and separate from mass culture, it’s okay to build on that.

This knowledge doesn’t make the cold less bitter. It does help one cope, and that is something brilliant on another cold night before sunrise in Iowa.

Categories
Home Life

Wintry Trip to Town

Snowfall in Big Grove
Snowfall in Big Grove

LAKE MACBRIDE— The sound of scraping entered the house and overpowered the muffling noise of the furnace fan. It will require work to get to town for a meeting. At least the snow plow did its part.

The driveway is snow-packed from the car tires, so whatever fell last night won’t be easy to remove. Work was planned for indoors this morning: to write a story for the newspaper. Snowfall is a happy coincidence that will break the quiet and be part of today’s process of fresh air, physical labor and writing. It’s as good as it gets.

Whatever funk descended upon me in December is gone. The new jobs, the promise of spring, and hope that a sound financial platform will enable better writing portend great things. Here’s hoping I’m equal to February’s promise.

Solon During a Snowstorm
Solon During a Snowstorm