It’s unusually cold. Almost all surface water is frozen, but it’s still liquid in a couple little trickles off the hillsides, where the ground folds up carefully to funnel it away.
A little wren keeps visiting the dish of cat food that I left on my porch when trying to figure out where my cat had vanished to (turns out he was deep in the recesses of the master bedroom’s walk-in closet). I’ll leave it out for now, though, as it’s one of the only food sources available for the round, fidgetey little wren.
The hummingbird feeder seemed to freeze solid, but on closer examination, the ice is only in the top part. It’s freeze-distilled like turning weak booze into strong booze, and the bottom of the feeder contains a syrup too sugary to freeze. When I tip the feeder, a trickle of that syrup creeps gingerly out of the flower hole, as if regretting its decision to face the wind.
I haven’t seen the hummingbird since things froze, nor heard him arguing with his colleagues in the bush where they reside. I think they’re in torpor till the weather gets better.
The bird-brained chicken who rejects the coop in favor of sleeping in a tree had snow stuck to her back this morning, and seems to have finally retreated to the coop where it’s warmer.
Particle effects of some white stage of water show where the wind is pointing. Sideways usually, eddying straight downward or straight up at other times.
There’s the “and if you planned it poorly, then you die” of leaving the house at the moment. Even of staying inside, really. Don’t catch it all on fire. Don’t fall; don’t break a limb; don’t hit your head. Unusually bad time for an appendix to do as they are wont to.
Air this cold has an almost meditative self-awareness to it, though. It’s conducive to calm, to deliberate movement, tempered by the awareness that calm of the wrong sort can be symptomatic of hypothermia. There’s a closer eye to keep on the exact sensations of fingers and nose, with visceral training in how it goes if one lets them get stolen away by frostbite.
There’s also an attention to the state of the body’s core, which isn’t usually worthwhile. But in a freeze this hard, its ROI can include survival. You’re ok, more or less, in enough layers, if you stay dry. Sweat, though, and you aren’t dry any more. Get too sweaty, you might freeze. Layers of clothing take careful attention and manipulation: Fluffy enough to trap the warm air near, wind-proof enough to keep the gusts from snatching the cold out, breathable enough to keep the whole system as close as possible to dry. Leave any gap, and the sensorium highlights it screamingly.
It’s safe enough, of course, being as close to my house as I stay. A castle of modern technology and engineering, containing a tame hot fire backed up by electricity and propane. But it’s the nature of the brain, I think, to extrapolate how far that safety extends. How far afield does the house project its safety? Where’s the line where it’s more important to count on one’s preparation and knowledge and skill? I notice myself calculating it all out. If that’s abnormal, then the deviation is in the observation of the thoughts, I think, and not the underlying line of processing itself.
And there’s a special loss of anonymity in snow. Creatures leave tracks, and I can see their little dramas unfold in ways they’d never do in line-of-sight from me. The deer rushed across the driveway, eyed the steep embankment, realized it was too tall, skidded to a stop, then walked away. A rabbit snuck out, sat staring around itself, got startled by something, scampered away home. A car or two have gone this way along the road, but not the other.
I don’t mind snow’s tattling, though, because the stories are only revealed if you’re close enough to when and where they are. The only bigger right than privacy, I think, is the right to perceive one’s own surroundings. If I’m in the immediate surroundings of something, they get to see my tracks. I can see my tracks too; I can tell where I’m leaving them. If I valued not being seen somewhere more than I valued going there, I could simply not go, and not leave tracks. I can go back out later, check if my tracks have filled in and blown away yet, and know exactly what my neighbors or the deer would know of the paths I’ve walked today.
Snow stretches out temporal perception, I’d say, when we’re all leaving tracks in it. It buys us time, procrastinates, lets later-selves see things that would normally be restricted to onlookers of only a moment.
I’m glad we get it sometimes here, but as glad when it eventually goes away.
It’s unusually cold. Almost all surface water is frozen, but it’s still liquid in a couple little trickles off the hillsides, where the ground folds up carefully to funnel it away.
A little wren keeps visiting the dish of cat food that I left on my porch when trying to figure out where my cat had vanished to (turns out he was deep in the recesses of the master bedroom’s walk-in closet). I’ll leave it out for now, though, as it’s one of the only food sources available for the round, fidgetey little wren.
The hummingbird feeder seemed to freeze solid, but on closer examination, the ice is only in the top part. It’s freeze-distilled like turning weak booze into strong booze, and the bottom of the feeder contains a syrup too sugary to freeze. When I tip the feeder, a trickle of that syrup creeps gingerly out of the flower hole, as if regretting its decision to face the wind.
I haven’t seen the hummingbird since things froze, nor heard him arguing with his colleagues in the bush where they reside. I think they’re in torpor till the weather gets better.
The bird-brained chicken who rejects the coop in favor of sleeping in a tree had snow stuck to her back this morning, and seems to have finally retreated to the coop where it’s warmer.
Particle effects of some white stage of water show where the wind is pointing. Sideways usually, eddying straight downward or straight up at other times.
There’s the “and if you planned it poorly, then you die” of leaving the house at the moment. Even of staying inside, really. Don’t catch it all on fire. Don’t fall; don’t break a limb; don’t hit your head. Unusually bad time for an appendix to do as they are wont to.
Air this cold has an almost meditative self-awareness to it, though. It’s conducive to calm, to deliberate movement, tempered by the awareness that calm of the wrong sort can be symptomatic of hypothermia. There’s a closer eye to keep on the exact sensations of fingers and nose, with visceral training in how it goes if one lets them get stolen away by frostbite.
There’s also an attention to the state of the body’s core, which isn’t usually worthwhile. But in a freeze this hard, its ROI can include survival. You’re ok, more or less, in enough layers, if you stay dry. Sweat, though, and you aren’t dry any more. Get too sweaty, you might freeze. Layers of clothing take careful attention and manipulation: Fluffy enough to trap the warm air near, wind-proof enough to keep the gusts from snatching the cold out, breathable enough to keep the whole system as close as possible to dry. Leave any gap, and the sensorium highlights it screamingly.
It’s safe enough, of course, being as close to my house as I stay. A castle of modern technology and engineering, containing a tame hot fire backed up by electricity and propane. But it’s the nature of the brain, I think, to extrapolate how far that safety extends. How far afield does the house project its safety? Where’s the line where it’s more important to count on one’s preparation and knowledge and skill? I notice myself calculating it all out. If that’s abnormal, then the deviation is in the observation of the thoughts, I think, and not the underlying line of processing itself.
And there’s a special loss of anonymity in snow. Creatures leave tracks, and I can see their little dramas unfold in ways they’d never do in line-of-sight from me. The deer rushed across the driveway, eyed the steep embankment, realized it was too tall, skidded to a stop, then walked away. A rabbit snuck out, sat staring around itself, got startled by something, scampered away home. A car or two have gone this way along the road, but not the other.
I don’t mind snow’s tattling, though, because the stories are only revealed if you’re close enough to when and where they are. The only bigger right than privacy, I think, is the right to perceive one’s own surroundings. If I’m in the immediate surroundings of something, they get to see my tracks. I can see my tracks too; I can tell where I’m leaving them. If I valued not being seen somewhere more than I valued going there, I could simply not go, and not leave tracks. I can go back out later, check if my tracks have filled in and blown away yet, and know exactly what my neighbors or the deer would know of the paths I’ve walked today.
Snow stretches out temporal perception, I’d say, when we’re all leaving tracks in it. It buys us time, procrastinates, lets later-selves see things that would normally be restricted to onlookers of only a moment.
I’m glad we get it sometimes here, but as glad when it eventually goes away.