It's Still Winter Here...

Today I was introduced to a couple of the residents here - they live in the Annex and sleep from the ceiling!

These are Little Brown Bats - that's really their name (or, Myotis lucifugus). 1 As long as we're quiet, they don't mind a quick visit.
Check out those adorable toes they are holding themselves up with.

In a beautiful patch of old-growth forest, we settled on the wet moss to watch a newt lumber like the slowest wind-up toy, like a dinosaur, through the undergrowth.

Looking up to 80-meter trees, I see white sleet hanging from the sky. It has been a strange winter this year - first an early thaw, then, after several days of warm sunshine, and shortly before I arrived, a snowstorm that has stayed, and stayed, and stayed. It will be interesting to compare this to other years - although since I have never been here for more than a few days at a time, I have no sense of normality.


Everything here is new to me! The chance to get to know this place on a more intimate level is something for which I will be thankful forever. Already I am learning to look at the world in a different way. <>

1. Peterson Field Guide to Mammals

Late Winter

Rain today, and snow up higher. Varied thrushes singing from the old hemlocks. Startled two deer going into the woods, footprints in the mud showing their haste.

Then home – a door, a step, a light, and warmth – as if the house itself has been keeping for me.

Bucking up fallen logs across the road, my breath steams in front of me, as my clothes steam in the cold, as the saw steams as Jay melts it through red rotted Doug Fir.

Home, and curry powder on my potatoes, meat, onions. Sweet-spicy smell of my hearth.

Giving my thanks the best I can, bow drawn slowly across strings, I compose a
thrush-song on the fiddle. <>