January clouds

The sunrises and sunsets here at Roundtop this winter have presented more than a few spectacular displays. It takes clouds to make a truly beautiful sunrise or sunset. Clouds create unusual and breathtaking colors as the angle of the sun’s path changes. For a few moments or minutes.

After that it all turns to just clouds. And that’s how January has been here—cloudy.

In many, perhaps most, Januarys here the sky varies between storms and sun. It snows, then it clears and eventually it snows again. This year, we’ve had some of the snow and a fair number of storms, but little of the clear blue skies that usually follow. The cloudiness has remained, a somewhat unwelcome visitor except for those first and last moments of the day.

January daylight is already in short supply. The sun’s rays are weak and the hours of day short. To have what sunlight is possible limited even more by clouds is starting to feel a bit confining to me. I’m not sure it’s seasonal affective disorder so much as photographic withdrawal. In January, a cloudy sky makes the weak light even dimmer, and the hours or minutes when I can take photos even fewer.

Nothing can be done about it, of course. It’s simply a matter of waiting for that clear sky to reappear, for the days to grow longer, for the sun’s angle to grow stronger again. The sunsets and sunrises are glorious and so help a bit to mitigate my impatience, for that’s what this really is. Neither the world nor the sky is as I would will it, and sometimes I just need to remind myself of that.

Gloomy Day

Yesterday’s sunshine turned out to be only momentary. That such a brief appearance of sunshine was cause for my celebration is just one more indication how gloomy it has been here for I-don’t-even-remember-how-long now. This morning the gloom is back (see photo).

My own gloom these days extends beyond the weather and off the mountain. Each spring brings another destruction season (as I call it), with more open land, farmland, woodland razed to build ever more houses (or housing units as developers prefer to call them). I can already see the signs of this season's destruction--tapes around trees, stakes in fields, the path of a bulldozer through a wood lot.

I am starting to feel like an endangered species myself, though it is my lifestyle that's endangered. Suburbia moves ever closer and the people who come are interested in things like curbs and street lights. I will never understand why people who move to places with open air and open land want nothing more than to make where they move to look like the cities they are escaping. But that's just me. Obviously.

Clouds of Change

After getting an inch of rain, the sky is now clearing. Clouds race across the horizon, first in shades of gray, then white puffs with hints of blue behind them, and finally dark and threatening gray again. The wind roared across the mountain last night. Branches dropped onto the cabin roof, and called Baby Dog to barking.

This morning, the wind is strong but no longer roaring. The vultures were airborne as soon as it was light enough to see. Perhaps they were lured into such an early flight because they were ground-bound by the rain yesterday. Perhaps they also know that a nor’easter is due tomorrow and could bring snow back to the area. Today will be the only day they have, probably, to search for food, and they want to take advantage of every minute.

To me, the weather feels like late October or early November. If it was, I’d be proclaiming it “golden eagle weather” and would try to put myself on a hawkwatch someplace. But northwest winds in spring are just the opposite of good migration weather.

With this year’s weather so unusual, I’m afraid the spring migration, when it happens, will be over in a day or two. Somewhere, further south, the spring birds are backed up by this weather, waiting for it to improve before attempting the flight north. Those who have the furthest to go will likely fly for long hours and may well overfly this area without stopping.
For now, I have a phoebe calling—after silence for several days—and the towhee’s song to fill the woods. Tomorrow’s snow is still a day away.