And again

 

"so I came straight off here, through the Wild Wood and the snow! My! it was fine, coming through the snow as the red sun was rising and showing against the black tree-trunks! As you went along in the stillness, every now and then masses of snow slid off the branches suddenly with a flop! making you jump and run for cover. Snow-castles and snow-caverns had sprung up out of nowhere in the night--and snow bridges, terraces, ramparts--I could have stayed and played with them for hours. Here and there great branches had been torn away by the sheer weight of the snow,”

                                                         Wind in the Willows

                                                                    Kenneth Grahame

Snow and home again.

"No wiser now 
Than the spellbound child
who first beheld beguiled, 
Long seventy years ago
Enchanted snow."

                                               Enchanted Snow 
                                          Melville Cane

After mentioning that there was little snow, it snowed on Jan. 5th, the day before we were heading back to Calgary.

Then winter arrived with a vengeance. I sent this email to my family on Jan. 12th.

"We are okay. We had to go out for a minor medical errand this afternoon. The temp registered outside the cab, we made no attempt to start the car, was -35. That was not the wind chill. I did do a bit on the walk this morning and I said to Helen it was about as cold as I could ever remember. Nina and Whateley are only out for a minute or so but sometimes Nina limps in and has to be carried up the steps from the landing."


But it is supposed to warm up on the weekend.

At the farm Christmas 2023

                                                     

"When the great wind comes

and the robberies of the rain

you stand on the corner shivering.

The people who go by—

you wonder at their calm.

They miss the whisper that runs

any day in your mind,

“Who are you really, wanderer?”—

and the answer you have to give

no matter how dark and cold

the world around you is:

“Maybe I’m a king.”"

from A Story That Could Be True

by William Stafford

https://poetry.princeton.edu/2010/01/05/a-story-that-could-be-true/

Morning

This morning I went out to shovel but this white-tailed jackrabbit 

was still resting so I came back inside.

“The Whole landscape drifted away to the north,

To Moose Factory, hundreds of miles, to the pole

And beyond, to the Arctic ends of the earth,”

A Window on the North

R.A.D. Jones

Snow with Coyote

Snow this morning, At 6:30 I was just finishing shovelling 

when a coyote trotted past me down the centre of the 
street. It is -15, wc -23 but it did not feel that cold.


“so I came straight off here, through the Wild Wood and the snow! My! it was fine, coming through the snow as the red sun was rising and showing against the black tree-trunks! As you went along in the stillness, every now and then masses of snow slid off the branches suddenly with a flop! making you jump and run for cover. Snow-castles and snow-caverns had sprung up out of nowhere in the night--and snow bridges, terraces, ramparts--I could have stayed and played with them for hours. Here and there great branches had been torn away by the sheer weight of the snow,”

from Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

 

Snow Day

"White are the far-off plains, and white
The fading forests grow;
The wind dies out along the height,
And denser still the snow,
A gathering weight on roof and tree,
Falls down scarce audibly."

from Snow by Archibald Lampman

 

A photo from our trip to the farm at Christmas

"I've learnt the beatitudes of ice,

something sacred, something cold,

demanding respect, a paraphernalia

of horned boots, cowl and padded vest,

for body nicely flexed to winter's mould."

From Shovel to Self-propelled Blower:

The Immigrant's Progress

Reinzi Crusz

Very snowy day

  "burning on the snow
drag-footed across the fields
whiskey-faced men go

the blind lead the blind
and coarse oglers invade the
countries of the mind"

from Haiku on Brueghel
by Phyllis Gotlieb 

 While Calgary often gets snow in Sept and October, sometimes quite significant snowfalls, it normally lasts a day or so, then the autumnal weather returns. This year it has been cold and snowy for some days and today promises to be more of the same. 

Winter waxwing

"Pan, who and what art thou? he cried huskily

"I'm youth, I'm joy," Peter answered at a venture, 

"I'm a little bird that has broken out of the egg.”

― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

A couple days of snow and extreme cold is breaking, but not the coronavirus fears which are just beginning.

"Time does not pass when snow is falling —

only the silence falls. Trees glisten, trembling

as a body trembles beneath a white sheet,

the room cold, "

from The Snow

by Bruce Meyer

Cows in the snow

" We turn into winter;

when the next spring comes we will melt until

we run like rivers down the high green hill."

from We are sitting on a high green hill

by Gwendolyn MacEwen

Home again cont

“And this is what I learned: that the world’s otherness is antidote to confusion, that standing within this otherness—the beauty and the mystery of the world, out in the fields or deep inside books—can re-dignify the worst-stung heart.”

From Upstream: Selected Essays

by Mary Oliver

I wanted to post some shots from the trip home. The roads were good and there was a lot of hoar frost transforming the landscape. We also saw lots of animals most I did not get photos of. We saw Pronghorns which I mentioned last post. A deer had just crossed the road as we went through. We also saw Snowy Owl, a coyote, partridges and two unusual sights, the first a Red fox amid a cloud of crows. The second a Bald Eagle with Magpies. I thought in both cases they were being mobbed but Helen though they had a been feeding from the same road kill. It was a vey blue and white day.

The combination of moving car and moving animal rarely make for a stellar photo. But I have including it because I was really surprised to see a Bald Eagle here. We were heading towards the tiny badlands town of Dorothy Alberta at the time. I did not realize that this portion of the Red Deer River Valley had Bald Eagles.

Winter Walk Dec 11th.

  "No matter what your scientific background, emotionally you're an alchemist. You live in a world of liquids, solids, gases and the heat-transfer effects that accompany their changes of state. These are the things you perceive, the things you feel. What ever you know about their true natures is grafted on top of that." 

from Isle of the Dead

by Roger Zelazny

" I would clothe you in feathers

You are too bare in your long bones when the wind

sighs in the snow

You are the movement of birds"

from Words from the Aviary

(for Monique)

by D.G. Jones

It is snowing today. but I am cheating these photos were taken during a snow fall in early Oct. I suspect my favourite winter birds are the Dark-Eyed Juncos, who appear with the snow and disappear when it does. This year we had lots. They really seemed to be interested in the small seeds that fell from the volunteer weeds in  the patio, which we left in place. The Juncos interest me  because of their subtle colours and also the variation between birds. According to the Canadian Wildlife Federation our weeds, twiggy yard and lack of a fall cleanup was just what Junco's like. We also had a lot of fall warblers so this is a strategy we plan to stick to. 

http://cwf-fcf.org/en/resources/encyclopedias/fauna/birds/dark-eyed-junco.html?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIx6n5mtWI5gIVRCCtBh16bQHXEAAYASAAEgJxPPD_BwE

I changed my coat for this?

Yesterday we dropped by CDN Tire and I picked up four 

roses. It was cold and the snow was not far behind. But

the trees are budding and this morning we are seem to be 

becalmed between the seasons.

"We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.
Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail
Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;
Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;
And, in the isolation of the sky,"

from Sunday Morning

By Wallace Stevens

First lesson – stick them with the pointy end. Jon Snow, Game of Thrones

Winter is coming (Shaun) 

The Winter Prairie #10

"Bell rings and they go and the voice draws their pencil

like a sled across snow; when its runners are frozen

rope snaps and the voice then is pulling no burden

but runs like a dog on the winter of paper."

from The Stenographers

by P.K. Page

Anansi, 1974

The Winter Prairie #9 (Vision now fine)

This is when the accomplished Mr. Murple

Splendid on skates comes forth to spin the night

Upon his arms outstretched and whirling eyeballs.

 from Ice at Last

George Johnson

Toronto Oxford University Press 1959

The Winter Prairie #8

"Yes, it has its head in the clouds, clouds
on its mind, indifferently
contemplates the weather by day, 
at night the blue toil of stars, 
reminding us of someone cleaning 
a house or writing a poem"

from Cloud Gate
by Kathleen Wall & Veronica Reminder

University of Calgary Press, 2018

The Winter Prairie #7

"Moving 

to establish distance

between our houses.

It seems

I welcome you in."

from Moving

by Phyllis Webb

Selected Poems 1954-1965

Phyllis Webb, Tallon Books, 1971