Waking To The Sounds Of Tundra Swans

The Majesty Of Winter

Lake Side Cairn

7:30 AM

Well, it was 5:00 when I got up; I thought I heard voices, listened more carefully and realized it was the swans 'high pitched often quavering oo-oo-oo, accentuated in the middle; or who, who-ho: woo-o-woo,' the same sound I went to sleep to.  Unfortunately, I thought my watch said 6:00, so I got up, started the coffee, turned on the light, and realized it was really 5:00 not 6:00 but I was too awake to go back to bed.  So it's now 6:00 and I have surfed for about an hour and am ready to start my blog. Breakfast at 8:00 with the boys, perhaps I will shovel the parking lot before I go.

We had about six inches when we got up yesterday morning, a good start to the day, waking up to a snow covered yard.  I had found a Swedish walnut cookie recipe on a blog, sent it to Evie and like magic, she made up the dough before we went for our hike.  We went outside about 10:30 and between the two of us, we cleared our parking area, also in front of the garage.  The snow was like down feathers, weightless and fun to shovel, unlike the heavy, wet snow we often get.  It was great to be outside doing something physical, and I even worked up a sweat.  About 11:00, we decided on hiking Long Point Park, not far away and mostly forested, a good choice.  We were the only ones in the park, the first to make any scars on the snow covered trails.  Even though it was in the twenties, neither one of us were cold, and we even had to unzip our coats after awhile.  We walked for close to two hours, through woods filled with puffs of cotton balls on the tree branches, with no pattern or reason for being, just chance, serendipity, the randomness of nature.  It was strange to see any empty parking lot, no trailers, fishing boats, just a cleared lot, soon, no doubt, to be filled with ice fishermen.  Winding our way through the forest, it gets windy, bitter cold when we get near the Pavilion, with nothing to block the West wind.  Even the snow is hardly an inch or two because of the blowing winds.  This part always reminds us of our hike two years ago with the Bissell's, poor Halle, then a kindergartner, cold and miserable but soldiering on, not complaining.  It's funny how certain hikes remind us of our grandchildren.

Winter Pines

Winter Scrub

We returned home about 1:00 and had one of my favorite lunches ( I have lots of favorites), a salad with leftover salmon, broken up, stirred in a salad of various greens, tomatoes, and Evie's home made salad dressing, a meal in itself, especially with a slice of my homemade bread.  During the afternoon, I finished Steve Jobs biography, close to 600 pages long, and was moved by the sad, slow end of his life though Isaaason does not really go into it in any detail.  We know he died.  And Evie baked the Swedish walnut cookies, similar in taste to Russian tea balls, but flat, less messy to eat and just as tasty, especially with a cup of Turkish tea to accompany it.  In fact, I have already had one this morning with my coffee.

5:15 PM, The Glow of Dusk

For dinner, we had Purdue's Boilermaker Chili, which Evie had made the day before.  I had mine on rice, with broken Frito chips on top, Evie added salad to hers, just what we wanted.  We had difficulty finding something to watch on TV.  I kept dozing off; Evie was bored too and spent a good half hour outside in the dark, shoveling our parking area again, covered with another four or five inches of snow. She loved it and if I hadn't felt so lazy,  I would have gone out to help her.  When she came in, we watched an episode of Chopped, which features kid chefs, all with some skills in the kitchen.  I have started reading some fluff again, George Pelecanos, an urban novel set in D.C. with Private Investigator Derek Strange, a brother who knows the city and its underclass well.  A bit of a bore so far, I will stick with it.

Another hour and a half till breakfast...what am I going to do?