Ice out !

March 29, 2016
Daytime high: 65 F.
Earliest ice out in 24 springs here

Perhaps a Paddle

Two days into Spring and the schedule is still off by about three weeks. Although the weather has cooled from the outrageous sixties of last week, the progressive regression of the lake ice continues. An inch of snow overnight is gone by the time I return form the daily grinder. We make 40 by two pm and barely freeze by daybreak. Yesterday there appeared chipmunks in various places around the woods. Poof! Sleepy from their winter's nap they are so very vulnerable now. But the dogs are equally rusty, so all the munks survive another day.

 

And the beavers are out at dusk under the full moon.
Onaabidin-Giizis
The snow crust moon
Not this year...........

 Birds of note, new arrivals:

Redtailed Hawk
Sharpshinned Hawk
Sandhill Crane
Robin
Red-winged Blackbird
Bufflehead
Hooded Merganzer
Mallards at the home place

Perhaps a shoreline paddle tomorrow...............

Then and now or The Woodchuck called it

When I was a kid
one of my more colorful uncles
had a folksy phrase or definition
ready for any event

His description of winter in northern Minnesota was,
"Nine months of ice and snow, and three months of poor sledding"
 Fifty years down the winding road, and there have been some changes

 like the lake ice pulling away from the shore

 

and rain before the equinox

the Ides of March

unprepared to measure the liquid state

and trumpeter swans everywhere.

therefore a new folksy phrase...........

"Nine months of non winter and three months of dubious sledding"

A sniff of simplicity

The bluegill comes up and out of the hole and into my hands
with a scent of uniquely lepomian slime
neither densely trout nor pungently pike
that lightly clings as a harbinger of springtime pursuits