The Snows Came Last Night
The snows came today, not just the flood of simple flakes dropping delicately from the shadowless sky, but with the hard push of windblown pellets fired by February’s fury. In the morning, it was thirty degrees and seemingly non-threatening but the wind, yes the wind, was hell bent on ripping snow-loaded branches from every tree, especially the mature White Pines on the back side of the garden. We never heard them crash this early morning because it seemed more reasonable to lay low in the down-covered bed reveling in profound comfort, the land of no guilt.
Without paying much serious attention to what was really going on in the backyard, or anywhere for that matter, we quietly marveled at the howling wind as if it was a musical interlude or at least just a passing expression of the newly minted climate situation now passing over the globe. Usually, we listen for the morning freight trains and never fail to note how they sound like approaching tornadoes but then, in their passing, fade Doppler-like into distant farmland. This morning the howl of the western wind over-rode all other sounds as it surged and scattered through the winter trees leaving the heavy trains undetected.
While glancing out the window on the way to a cup of Russian Tea, we noticed in the garden the startling view of newly fallen branches, a couple of considerable mass obviously the victims of weighted snow and that west wind. The scattering branches attested to the velocity at which the broken mass plunged to the frozen ground—thankfully not targeting the cars for playing their role in creating such weather. But, then it was us that drove the cars.
Out the backside window, the bird feeder stood covered with three inches of new wet snow. Four doves worked the edges trying with determination to break through to where they knew sunflower seeds hid. The doves seemed frantic, frustrated, maybe desperate we thought, after all, where else could they find food other than from the hand of man. They were not meant to over-winter in this now seedless landscape. Interestingly, they had found what has become generally warmer weather good reason to linger this far north. I could not help to think again of those emission-spewing cars.
One could say, the fallen tree was just novel, maybe a curiosity in that it represented potential damage, but the Morning Doves in their efforts put a certain rush into my at-the-moment minimal ambition. They looked our way as they detected movement in the house. There was no plaintive call of springtime, no cooing in contentment just a glance from a side eye, no derision, no visible pleading but we still felt the tea could wait.
In order to make the morning right, and the tea heart-felt, I armored-up, put on the boots and stepped into the ten-o’clock backyard to clear the covered feeder and pour forth a full measure of the finest of oily seeds wanting to make sure my morning beverage was in good conscience and the feathered friends could wait-out the western wind, warm and unthreatened in the shrouded pines.
