HINTS AT WINTER

Ridges, individual stones and other shapes are made distinct by dustings of snow.   Those dustings, adding up, I suppose, to two or three inches, are all we have had so far.  The snow shovel is leaning against the side of our front door, our tractor has been converted from grass cutter to snow blower, so we are prepared.  The blower, alas, is still virginal; last year it arrived two days after that single day-before-Thanksgiving storm, and wasn’t needed for the rest of the winter.  There is nothing on the horizon except flurries.  The webcam at Sugarbush, where we have season tickets this year, shows white slopes now–­at last–and touts good conditions on some slopes, but the weather is still above freezing here (where we keep seeing rain and mist) and we are not yet motivated to head over the mountain.   Of course, all this could change.

An early snow covering a portion of our frozen pond

Visitors are appreciated at a dark time of year.  There are fewer options for outdoor fun, and what there is needs to be squeezed into the early part of the day as the light, meager at best on some days, begins to fade completely by 4 o’clock.  Shortly after Thanksgiving Michele, once our neighbor in Lexington, came up.  (She now lives in Falmouth, others neighbors moved to Paris, and several others sold and moved elsewhere, all in the last year.  Our old neighborhood, in other words, no longer exists.  Après nous–– rien!)   And from Australia, by way of Montréal, we were visited by Stephanie and Micah, Stephanie being–this sounds distant and complicated–a granddaughter of my late cousin George and wife Nelly.  We had last seen Stephanie when she had newly graduated from high school in Australia on our last trip there in 2004.

Stephanie (who saw snow for the first time in Canada) prepares a snowball for Micah

More visitors:  Birds have been the visiting the bird feeder (and suet, above) in large numbers, emptying it every other day.  We have seen what I guess is the usual:  countless finches and chickadees, several woodpeckers, bluejays, cardinals, nuthatches, mourning doves, titmouses (titmice?), and a somewhat uncommon white winged crossbill.  Ken, who has taken on the job of feeder servicing, can hardly keep up.  He has a daily battle with some persistent squirrels.  One squirrel, perhaps frustrated and annoyed by the tape Ken put over the feeder lid after he or a buddy of his had pried it open several times, jumped onto the window sill one morning, looked directly at Ken who was sitting in a chair near the window, and gave him a long, hard look.

The squirrel, frustrated, contemplates his next move.

In the woods behind our house, a barred owl.

As for other animals, a footnote on “In Deer Season.”  According to our local newspaper, Vermont’s deer herd grew by 2,000 this past year from last year’s 125,000.   (By way of reference, there are some 626,000 people in the state of Vermont.  How many hunters?)  The number of deer weighed in (that is to say, killed) during deer season this year was 405 in Addison County, an increase of about 23% from 2011, the second highest number since 2003. Young hunters (who only need to be old enough to know how to handle a rifle–there's no bottom age limit–and have taken a gun safety course, and no older than 16) took 124 deer.  Young hunters can shoot does, or pretty much any deer of any size (an ethical choice, I suppose), although adults can only hunt bucks.  

***

There is shooting, and there is hunting, and the differences are large.  Still, those words conjure up other images, unbidden.

Thoughts turn to peace, to family, at this time of year, the world, our world, still in shock after the deaths of so many very young innocent children in Connecticut.  It seems fitting to end with another poem, written several years ago.

If I Ruled the World – Olin Goudey (at age 8)

If I ruled the world

It would be innocents

Comforting young ones

            There would be love

            There would be love

Separating the best words,

The old and the young

Are now free

            There would be love

Closing the unpleasant truth

Peace and love in one thing

Seeing the white bird fly

            There would be love.