Towards the valley

 A clear and sunny morning is both a relief and something of a rarity here this year. The relief is because clear skies mean the bizarre weather of the day before is over. Yesterday brought 12 hours of thunder, lightning, thundersnow, thundersleet, hail, rain, snow, sleet, freezing rain…Have I forgotten anything? Is there anything else that might have fallen from the sky? I think yesterday produced something of absolutely everything.

This morning the clear skies are certainly welcome, and unfortunately, this year clear skies are less common than is typical. Winters here are most often bright and cold. This year was gloomy and cold, and that turned out not to be my favorite combination.

Today is chilly at 24 degrees, but not unreasonably so, especially since the sky is so clear. The mornings are still pretty dark in my woods when I leave for work, so I am posting a photo from outside my woods, as I’m heading down from the mountain and into the valley. This is the point where not only am I out of the forest, but I’m also just about out of the hilly farmland that begins where the forest end and runs to the first encroachment of almost-suburbia.

My eye automatically travels to the mountains on the other side of the valley, so I can almost ignore the houses in the foreground.

Sometimes, living where I do on my little mountain island of the forest, requires a bit of ignoring. Even year, it seems, the houses get closer, the farmland gets built up, a new road cuts through the woods or a patch of forest is cut. There’s nothing I can do about any of that, so I might as well ignore the outside world, continue to experience my own patch of woods and enjoy the time I have under the canopy of the old oaks.