Well the snow we knew was coming started at 4:00 in the afternoon Friday and has been pretty steady since then. However it has not been overwhelming and not too cold we are at minus 21 C at present.  This has however led to shoveling snow that most iconic of winter pastimes. However our portion is fairly small, we have neither driveway or car.

A number of poets have mentioned this winter rite.

"He had thrown himself into shoveling snow

as if it were the purpose of existance,

as if the sign of a perfect life were a clear driveway."

                                                        Shoveling Snow with Buddha

                                                                  Billy Collins

" 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

On a trip to Edmonton in the early fall I was able to watch a small red squirrel interact with the magpies. He lives in the spruce across from the window of the desk where I work but claims the entire area including the bushes in front of the window and the two trees down the slope. I first noticed him when he shot up the near tree a couple of times after a pair of magpies.  One flew to the top the other moved to a spot where he could not be easily reached.  The squirrel returned to the ground then crept closer it would disappear, then it's head would pop up here and there like a character in a Looney Tunes cartoon finally it rushed up the second tree and zipped along a branch to reach the magpie who finally gave up and flew off.

I am familiar with the territorial behavior of red squirrels, although they are rare in the city now having been replaced by black squirrels.  Many years ago one moved into a spruce tree next to the window of our apartment's kitchen it would hang from the screen and chatter at us if we moved about in the room. This lasted until a neighbour chained a German Shepard to the tree hopefully it simply moved.

Another time we were in an archaeological field camp, the outhouse was off by itself in a grove of spruce with a red squirrel chattering at you the entire way. The outhouse had a corrugated plastic roof, once you were sitting there having a quiet moment the squirrel would launch a spruce cone from 20 to 30 feet up the tree the noise was incredible, like a rifle shot.  It also crept into our tent trailer at night and boogied under the kitchen sink, a great place to store cones. A handful of black pepper ended that but the outhouse remained an experience.

I returned to Edmonton to work this winter and the squirrel magpie drama continued.  This time there had been several enormous snowfalls the magpie would land on a tree next to the next the spruce the squirrel would attack.  Since the layers of snow where so deep he often tunneled under neath, the squirrel used a different strategy.  It launched itself from the tree, sometimes from 5 or 6 feet up trying to intersect the magpie in the tree or in the air, upon missing it would break thru the crust and disappear. Twice I saw the magpie struggle into the air and then saw something fall away and the squirrel reappear.  I do not know whom latched onto to who but the magpie only made it a few inches into the air. The number of magpies increased the snow continued and the "game" ended. 

But the great and flashing magpie
He flies as artists might.

A magpie in Picardy
Told me secret things—
Of the music in white feathers,
And the sunlight that sings
And dances in deep shadows—
He told me with his wings.

                                                    Magpies in Picardy

                                                                                 T.P. Cameron Wilson

The rest of this poem and more information on

it's author can be found at Tim Kendall's blog on war poets.

All three of our locations are situated in park like setting.  Edmonton has a large pond with ducks and geese in the summer.  Calgary used to get deer probably sneaking down from Nose Hill Park but I think a spate of construction a few years ago blocked their routes. We still get grey partridges, duck, geese and white tailed jack rabbits.  These pictures however are still from my trip to Edmonton.

"To be inhabited, to be explored

        With the single-minded perseverance

                        Of a blind man whose sight has been restored."

                                          

                                                The Secret Amplitude

                                                             John Koethe

I finally took my camera on a trip to Edmonton.

They have had a lot of snow possibly the most in decades.

Snow is one of those things that is "fine" to watch

when you have nowhere to be but present.

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

                                               Enchanted Snow
                                          Melville Cane

Several people asked what I was taking pictures of
but it was hard to know what to say there was so much and so little.

                                               

I had planned to post some photos

from my business trip to Edmonton.

Boy lots of snow.

But then the neighbours dropped in.

Even the weird redheaded neighbours from down the block.

"Sparrows splash
in shallow sunny  
puddles."

                                                Ken Wagner on Haiku Habits

 

                                                                                   

At one point it was everybody out of the pool. 

Then I heard a magpie call, he landed, stomped

around the yard, saw me and left. 

The sparrows returned and

the house finches started to show up.

                                                                                   

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

"Therefore I shall throw

Broken bread, this sullen day,

Out across the snow,

Betting crust and crumb

That birds will gather, and that

One more spring will come."

                                                    Ecclesiastes 11:1     

                                                                   Richard Wilbur

                                               

I was in Edmonton for part of last week, they had even more snow than Calgary  but the temperate was about the same between -20-25 degrees C with a wind chill.  I have not managed much time outside but I tried for some photos this morning. 

                          For this one my motto is if you can't be in focus be mysterious..,

                                    
                                                    "The city. A winter sky.
                                                    Darkness. The portal yawns."
                                          
                                                                       Bacchanalia
                                                                            Boris Pasternak

                                           

      "A chaos of clear horns rings in the snow dawn

            of a place I visit in dream,

            I don't know where."

                                                                    Record of Dream, Sent to Shi Bohun,
                                                           to the Tune of " Night Roaming in the Palace"
                                                                                                             Lu You                                                                                                                 

This beautiful box was a Christmas present from my mother-in-law.

It was described by the woodworker as

Bison Spirit Box

Black Walnut with Spalting

Birch Tile surrounded by African

Padauk Border.

Friendly Forest Products

Of course I had to think of what to keep in it.

And it had to be special.

Some random magpie feathers,

a red tailed hawk feather given me by my brother-in-law.

He retrieved it from the land he sold us for the cabin we hope to build this summer.

A small rose pebble, a magpie dropped this from a roof next to where I was sitting having coffee.

I am not sure what will be next.

"Once I came back to the leaves just as they were falling

Into the rattling of magpies and the waving flights

Through treetops beyond the long field tawny with stubble"

                                                         Gate

                                                                       W.S. Merwin