Polar Vortex?!

Beautiful winter sunset in NE Ohio

While we were sitting inside worrying about the Polar Vortex and how that would impact our lives as we know it....I was wondering if I should venture outside to take pictures.  Would my camera freeze, would the lens fog up, would my fingers drop off like icicles falling from a roof?   I love the stark beauty encountered during freezes and snowy weather.  I've had wonderful opportunities to take pictures in the snow over the last six plus years living in Northeast Ohio.  It is part of its charm, the snowy winters. 

Ohio didn't get much snow but it was really cold

Truly it was too cold to venture into the outdoors.  Even my hardcore hiking friends were hunkered down in hotel rooms.   I bet the TV ratings for viewership skyrocketed.   My heart went out to friends and family far away who were suddenly without heat.  Others it turned out had feet of snow where my car normally is parked.  So, its all good and we've gotten through it.  On with normal activities.

Finding beauty in winter bushes

What I most love about winter photography is that one's focus shifts.  Yes, of course, there are fantastic vistas to be seen, sun shadowed mountains glittering with snow, the fog of frost floating around their sunlit crowns.  But I tend to look down.  I look to the minutia, the small things.  Tracks in the snow, buds hanging alone off dormant branches, color highlighted against the monotony of black and white.  I look for shadows, for clouds in the sky, some cool stuff has been found in melting pockets of snow within tree's roots.  Its all about finding life in frozen places.  

Looking into the 'heart' of winter

This has caused me to think about how life reflects nature.  How I often find the most inspiration amongst the frozen places of my heart.  When looking down into the depths in the melting places, that is where the color and creativity comes from.  For when the light of inspiration and acceptance shines on those places of pain and regret illuminating one's true self that is when the heart and soul warms.  I've found that when the integration of dark and light occurs within me and I am able to love and accept it ALL...well amazing results occur.

Indiana plains waiting for the spring

Consider this, that it is both the dark and the light, the shadow and the bright, the ying and yang of me that makes me who I am.  The path I've walked brought me through those experiences for a reason.  How can I reject then, who I've become?  Just like spring without winter, life without death, sun without clouds...I accept all that has gone forth in my life. 

Winter grasses where small animals slumber in silence 

Many of us who are outside people or gardeners know that this quiet time of nature's slumber is a time when we must remain vigilant.  We clean the gear, we clean the garden tools, we begin to plan for what is to come.   So, too, in the winter, I make the preparations inside to move into the new.  Another new year and so in reminding myself of these things I prepare for greater journeys. 

Trail in Snow, Tallmadge Meadows Metropark

Saying Good-by to Summer

Clements Mountain 9/14/2013

A bittersweet smile crossed my face as I stood looking at my favorite view of Clement's Mountain.  For whatever reason, I have loved this mountain from the first moment I saw it in early June.  Its regal continence stirred within my soul a wild longing...where it came from exactly, I do not know.  But this once, glacier clad mountain continues to speak to my wild heart and I acknowledge it with a kiss blown into the wind and few tears.

The side of Clements Mountain 8/2013

I came up here last Saturday thinking it would be my last time up before I move on to other adventures. I came to say goodbye, to ask it to watch over the wildness contained in this beautiful park.  To ask the Guardians who stand tall up there on the peak to keep safe the secrets I have only begun to hear and listen to.  But I was wrong.  I did come another day...yesterday and was able to enjoy the wildness of that mountain in all its glory. 

The meadow below Logan Pass looking up

It was snowing on Logan Pass on September 18, 2013.   Not a lot, not dangerously, the snow melted on the pavement as we rode up the Going to the Sun Road in the Red Jammer Bus, so I felt unafraid but wonderfully, wildly alive.  The small, wet flakes flew in a straight line with the wind into my hand.  Yet they clung 1000 feet up on the tall mountain sides which towered above me.  I was not driving so I could enjoy the cold, wetness as it hit my hands, my face.  I had them both stuck out of the Red Bus windows. 

The view out the back window of the bus

Luckily I was in the back of the bus...no one else cared. I shared the back seat with a stranger, someone I'd just met a few hours before.  The delightful surprise was that we both had our windows rolled down.  I glanced over and he was as enthralled with the weather and drive as I was.  Both of us,  like kids, were hanging out the windows and were enjoying the icy wind and fog-shrouded view of the steep mountains and valley.  I laughed to myself because everyone else was bundled in blankets.

Snow on the Gardne Wall

How great was it that a kindred soul rode in that backseat with me!  I got to enjoy the unusual beauty of the high mountains on such a day with someone who "got it".  That was an extra treat on this, my birthday.  So, the good-bye today was not just to my lovely, wonderful, wild mountains but to my 50's.  Yup it was my 60th birthday. The decade contained great discovery, adventure, health/un-health, happiness/sadness, personal and spiritual growth.  

Reflecting

I remember my 50th birthday, clearly.  I celebrated by backpacking alone out to my favorite spot in the Deem Wilderness, skinny dipping in Lake Monroe with the bridge in full view a few miles away down the lake.  I stood on that day, 10 years ago, upright in the shallow water and waved at the cars as they traveled home unaware of the naked aging yet still fit, beautiful body in the distance!  What will this next decade hold? I do not know. 

Looking back at Logan - Hawk weathering the storm

I am very excited though, if today is an indication of things to come.  How many get to celebrate on top of a 6500 ft peak in a small snow storm?  It was a fine way to say hello to new adventures and to remind me that summer lasts only for a time so live accordingly.

Fields of August Flowers at Logan Pass

The flowers bloom wildly & boldly but for a short time.  Fall comes and they grow golden with the coolness of autumn nights and sometimes the snow touches them early and they pass sooner than they expect to. Thus there is the need to live boldly and show one's true beauty and color as opportunity allows!  But some do survive to stand amidst the snow, brazenly resilient and colorful to the end.

I capture me while taking photo of friends

That will be my new expectation...to stand brazenly and colorfully and to live each day with the remembrance of September's cloudless blue skies.  I will enjoy the sun and walk up the mountain slope as far as I can for as long as I can stand upright to put one foot in front of another.  And then its going to be me and the walker clomping along.  I vow to never take things for granted but to enjoy and be amazed by the surprises around each turn in the road.  

Our shadows dance on top of Red Rock Falls in Many Glacier

So to put it in words we've all heard before and I paraphrase, I want to ...."slide into home base holding a beer glass in one hand and a chocolate bar in the other, beat up, hair askew, reading glasses slightly ajar, Leki poles bent, backpack torn and Keen sandals muddy, Yelling...WHOOO HOOOO! I did it up right!"

Sunset - Doing it up Right!

Flying Through Rocky

Written on February 26th as I was leaving Ohio for Florida.
So, today in an effort to escape the death throes of a northern winter, I am flying again to Florida.  Land of sun, sea and sand; its winds whisper my name and the ocean music sings its song to me even in my waking hours.  The Sea Gull's cry is a welcome home invocation.  Although, I am a child of the mountains, hills and forests, the wild coast touches my wild heart and I long to stand on an empty beach facing west, wind running fingers through my hair.  Oh, it can't come soon enough, that salty air.

Yet, Ohio wishes me to stay and with a grip like iron conspires with its sister states to the west to keep me here by hatching, Rocky.  I failed to realize, really, that winter storms are now being named.  It was with dismay that I started hearing of Rocky's approach.  Tough, hard, pummeling, blustery and bragging, this would be, in my mind what a storm named, Rocky, would be like, a fighter, unwilling to give up.  And so it is with this one, I've danced and dodged, lodged a jab or two myself, staying always ahead of it.  My steps always one ahead of him.  

What would have happened if we'd flown into Midway.

At first, my departure was set for afternoon out of Akron/Canton but by mid-day those plans were cancelled with the knock-out punch to the chin of Chicago.  That mighty city's Midway airport felled; closed to air traffic, dealt a blow by Rocky's snowy glove.  Lovely Southwest Airlines scrambled to find me another flight out today, so off I went to Cleveland Airport, whose selection of flights to Tampa, Florida is more generous.  Connection through Baltimore was possible, away from the mighty fist of Rocky.  But his glancing blow is still trying to knock me out by delaying my departure from Baltimore.

As I sit here, waiting, watching for his approach, hoping that my plane boards and scoots out ahead of his arrival into the northeastern Ohio ring of snow, I wonder if he will get the upper hand.  But just in time the doors open we board the plane and off we go.  Rocky still has some blocks, slamming us with turbulence and that bottom dropping out of the plane feeling.  We fly to Baltimore with the fasten seat belt sign on for almost the whole trip.  Yet once up above 10,000 feet all is calm.  The stars shine brightly and only the cloud mountains below indicate any issues.  The almost full moon brightens the sky and is so beautiful.  It illuminates the tops of the clouds below putting their peaks and valleys in bright relief. 
 
Upon arrival in Baltimore, thinking I still had 40 minutes or more to kill I allow other passengers who have a tighter connection to de-plane ahead of me.  Searching for a board gate sign, I turn left and spy it ahead.  Well, all is still as planned, Baltimore to Tampa still delayed.  I head back towards my gate, looking for a bathroom, when I hear:  "Welcome to Flight so and so non-stop service from Baltimore to Tampa boarding at gate 8." Wait,  WHAT! 3 minutes after I de-planed, I was lining up to re-plane?! Yikes!  So, within 10 minutes of getting off 1 plane, I was on another waiting to head to my final destination of sun, sand and surf.  Rocky wasn't going to win after all.  He was successfully knocked out and I was going to win at least this round with mother nature.    

Final destination, feet successfully de-planed on to the beach!

It's a Sunny Day!

It definitely feels like spring today.  There still is a nip in the air that doesn't quite go with the beautiful sunshine, however, there is that imperceptible 'smell' to the air that signals to me the shift in weather.  I can't really explain it except it smells like melting, an easing up, a release of the grip that hard winter has had.  Except this year, winter's turned out to be a weakling. 

Don't get me wrong, I've enjoyed not having to shovel the car off and shiver in my living room to warm up in the morning but I miss my snow.  I was definitely going to learn how to cross country ski this year and everyday do a circuit or two of my 2 acres to keep in shape.  Cross off the cross country...NO snow, no sledding down the scary hill, no cold, red cheeks, no snowshoeing, no skiing or beautiful pictures of snow covered fields in Northeast Ohio this year. Nope, its 50 plus degrees outside today and the March wind is blowing.

 

Goldfinch Changing Colors a Month Early

So, what has this crazy weather done to the wildlife?  Well, the birds have eaten off the ground all winter or caught bugs and not had to depend upon us for food.  Those marginal migraters have only gone down to Canton for the winter or haven't left at all.  So, the birds that are harbingers of spring rolled into our area this week; Red-Winged Blackbirds, singing their spring 'gunkladee' song are now starting to look for nesting sites in the marshes around me.  A Grackle was pigging out on my suet feeder today and the Starling presence at my feeder is multiplying. Skunks wandering in a post-hibernation sleep walk ended up on the side of the road taking a most disappointing nap. The poor raccoon is so sleepy from staying up most of the winter he probably is in counseling for sleep deprivation issues.  The squirrels are fat and going on a weight loss program.

 

Human Gathering Winter Comfort Food

We humans have survived over the eons because we were able to learn and adapt to changing weather patterns.  Huddling in caves when snow hits, reliving the myths and  stories and working on repairing tools and things, socializing and building a society while weather forced us to shelter together.  It still brings us together over beer and brats after a snowshoe trip into the mountains, chili bubbling on the stove with hot cornbread in the oven for 15 after sledding or my favorite, steaming, spicy chicken soup with fat noodles to not only soothe the sore throat but to hit head on the germs with spicy seasonings. 

I think it is the juxtaposition of cold vs hot, life-threatening vs life-supporting, community vs solo that makes the normally difficult season of winter so interesting.  I've missed that livin' on the edge and huddling  together against a common foe this year.  BUT, we still have High School Basketball tourney time, there is still a chance for bad weather....and you Hoosiers know what I'm talkin' about.