71 days of snow

I know the title of this post seems like a cute, little Christmas pageant but it is in reality a nightmarish real-time scenario.  Seventy-one continuous days of snow on the ground.  I've been told we're on track to breaking records here which might give some of us a big thrill but there's a good reason why I don't live in Fargo, North Dakota.  What a great year to find Wendell Berry eh?  I can hardly leave the house.  I guess that's a good thing according to some Wendellian philosophers but I'm more inclined to at least spend a little time outside.  The TV becomes more and more appealing as the snow just drags on into the cold, dark winter.  The boys become like caged, wild animals turning feral and dangerous, their behavior more and more erratic and unpredictable.  Where are our warm Chinook winds?  Where are our February springs?  This is much worse than Global Warming.  This is a giant global screw up.

This weekend I was cutting some boards in the back garage and the snow was coming down in big flakes which softened all the sounds of the city.  I immensely enjoyed the work of measuring and sawing with the garage door open and the world muted.  As I worked I suddenly realized there were about a thousand small song birds in the trees all about our neighborhood.  Their cacophony cut into the silence.  I don't know where they came from or why.  There were Song Sparrows, Chickadees, and Robins.  The juxtaposition of snow and spring filled the air.  Robins in February at 20 degrees?  It began to freak me out a little but I stopped working and went to the cupboard for a cup of bird seed.  The boys helped me spread it in a shallow box and we put it in the front yard and watched the birds swarm about with flitting glee at the sudden bounty.  They would fight and fluff and ferret seeds till they grew nervous and in a rush of wings would soar up to the overhanging branches.  All the trees were full of them.  And then they were gone. 

How many people do you suppose noticed their coming and going?  How many of these things do we miss by cutting ourselves off from the world?  If I'd not been working outside, taking my time with my handsaw, I'd probably have missed it altogether.  I'd have been loud and hurrying or curled up hibernating with a can of Guinness, a bag of cheetoes and Rachel Ray.  The birds, for whatever reason, gave me a moment of levity in a hard winter.  I give a hearty thanks to you oh songbirds.  Though you're probably all dead in a bush somewhere like frozen little chicken nuggets, I'll look on the bright side and assume your a hell of a lot handier with nature than I and you knew what you were doing and are just fine wherever you ended up.