It is a beautiful day here in the ‘burg! The early morning rain cleared off and now it is sunny and warm. I saw my first hummingbird, huddling cold and wet on the feeder outside the front window. I worked all morning putting together slides for a presentation next week but then had to go outside. There should be some perks to working from home, right? I took some pictures to commemorate the holiday and then walked down the winery road with Tina Turner, my beagle, not the singer. Perfect!
I’ve got an hour before the webinar and am planning to head back outside with holiday-appropriate reading: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard. I’m supposed to have it done by book group on Sunday…we all picked different books this month. I’m enjoying it: thick prose and sometimes disturbing images of nature that jar a bit but seem authentic. I’m not sure I always completely understand her philosophical points but she captures the moment better than anyone I know. Her concerns about missing spring really spoke to me:
So, I have been thinking about the change of seasons. I don’t want to miss spring this year. I want to distinguish the last winter frost from the out-of-season one, the frost of spring. I want to be there on the spot the moment the grass turns green. I always miss this radical revolution: I see it the next day from a window, the yard so suddenly green and lush I could envy Nebuchadnezzar down on all fours eating grass. This year I want to stick a net into time and say ‘now,’ as men plant flags on the ice and snow and say, ‘here.’ But it occurred to me that I could no more catch spring by the tip of the tail than I could untie the apparent knot in the snakeskin; there are no edges to grasp. Both are continuous loops.
That desire to capture spring is one of the reasons I’m taking so many pictures this year. Well, that and the new phone!
I’m going to take some other ecology related book with me on Sunday in hopes of convincing them to read one or two: maybe Wallace Berry and Barbara Kingsolver. I’ve still got to finish Bound for Glory and the Civil War essays.
