You know, sometimes an amazing thing happens along the road before you ever make it to the trailhead. Although I’m excited and expectant for the great walk I’ve planned for this first week of December, slowing down and looking around applies to the car trip too. The planned walk has to wait, this is too good to miss! See them?
Snow birds. Different possibilities present themselves. If you watch birds and anticipate winter visitors or migrating beauty, Snow Geese, Trumpeter Swans or Bohemian Waxwings may come to mind. If you live in the north, you may dream of heading far south during the coldest of days. However, if you live south, you experience invasions of pale northerners for periods from two to six months. Perspective really is everything.
Then there’s me. With family in Florida’s panhandle, a chance to visit loved ones at a time of year when warm, sunny days offer respite from the brown, drab view outside my window, especially this year when snow is scarce. It is time for a short trip that warms the heart and soul, offering green landscapes and very different walks.
https://joycarlough.smugmug.com/Florida/i-vv8KMSS/A
Winter in Montana. Many things come to mind: snow; sledding; skiing; snowshoeing; cold to frigid temperatures; large animals donning their thick, beautiful winter coats; bright sunshine reflecting off the sparkling white landscape. So far 2015 is living up to only one of those expectations. The poor animals in their beautiful, heavy winter coats thinking of heading to higher elevations to cool down.
Here in the valleys we are wondering what happened to our snow, although I think Massachusetts got it by mistake, and are looking at a landscape far from white or sparkling. What isn’t brown is gray and the sun is filtered through stratus or cirrus clouds. Our cold temps have mellowed into mid-40s during the day and mid-20s at night. It feels more like the spring of April than the winter of February. However, even dull and drab takes on life when we walk along a river, and the Missouri Headwater State Park is the point of joining (confluence) for three rivers to become the mighty Missouri River.
That travel alarm is really annoying with its inescapable bbbzzzzzzzz. Remind me again why it is blaring at 4:30am? Right, I’m staying at the Old Faithful Inn in order to greet dawn’s twilight near the Firehole Lake thermals. Watching as the sun rises issuing a challenge to the 23° temperature. Remember your hat and gloves.
It is the beginning of October with a 6:15am twilight, that first hint of promising warm sunshine. Happily it is October rather than June when twilight is 4:55am. A little perspective gets me moving. We want to be ready, camera in hand, to see the morning mist, the thermal steam, and their interaction as the sky grows light and the sun rises.
http://joycarlough.smugmug.com/Thermal-Masterpieces/i-6x54q9D
