Home in Rocky Point Oregon: current temperature 36 Degrees F high 43 low 25 partly sunny
But winter in March is different. Even though it is cold and the snow is really tiresome by now, it feels different. The days are getting longer, just a bit, but it isn’t dark any more at 4:30 in the afternoon. When it snows, it is usually a bit wetter, and there are patches of blue amid the fluff of snowy clouds. The air feels different. And the birds are back.
Early in the morning I can hear them down by the lake, but they are out on the water in places we can’t get to yet with the snow and ice all around. Still, we walked down there this morning to get the mail. Gingerly picking our way through the re-frozen slush in the driveway and hoping our boots didn’t crash through the crusty snow banks down by the water. When I went in to town yesterday, in the midst of a blustery snow storm, I saw open water along the edges of the lake, and saw that the swans had returned. I only had the iPad with me, and there was traffic and snow, so it was a quick photo, but it still made me really feel the difference between the deepening winter feeling of December and the promise of winter eventually ending. Maybe not in March, but still eventually it will end.
There is an aerial survey of the birds in Klamath Basin that is updated regularly, and even back on January 30, we had almost 44,000 tundra swans in the refuge complex. I love the swans especially, and the snow geese, they look like flapping sheets in the wind when they fly in unison and rise and fall over the landscape.
It was good to get back home. I did a deep clean on the house before I left, and Mo was away at her brother’s while I was gone, so we came home to a cozy, clean, wonderful home. Mo beat me home by a day, so when I returned the house was still sparkly but was WARM with a nice big fire going. Snow still on the ground, but sunshine and blue skies were wonderful. And silence. The nights are so dark and starry under the hot tub and the silence is just so SILENT! No street lights, no traffic, no trains, all the stuff of towns and cities are absent here in the forest.
We are settling in, enjoying home a bit before we decide just when to wander off to the cottage in Grants Pass and maybe get some beach time. Here at home I have a big quilt to finish binding, and fabric to play with, soil survey work waiting and all sorts of “retirement” projects that I still have yet to get to after three years as a retiree. I am never, never bored. Ever.
Something magical happens to me when I am in Ocala. Even though the population of the city is close to 100K it still feels like a small town. Often when I come here, the weather is wonderful, an incredible respite from cold and snow. This time I seem to have hit the coldest possible weather, with predictions for the low 20’s tonight and even colder temperatures possible in the next couple of days, with highs in the 40’s. I am leaving on Wednesday from Tampa, and the temperatures predicted for Thursday are back in the 70’s. Ah well. I am not really here for a vacation, I am here for my friend.
But back to that ‘thing’ that happens here in Ocala. The Ocala parade consisted of almost three hours of floats full of kids involved in every possible activity available, with gymnasts, and dancers, and singers, high school and middle school bands, and so many “miss whatever’s” they needed a dozen cars to carry them all. Ocala calls itself the horse capital of the south, and there was no lack of fabulous horses and horsemanship exhibited in the parade. Small town stuff at it’s best.
Somehow, here in this town, I find myself slowing to a crawl. I listen to birds and watch the light play on the leaves. I watch the skies change from gray to sunny back to gray and sit on the porch watching the rain. Ocala really isn’t a destination, there isn’t much here for a traveler passing through, there is bad traffic down on “200”, there is crime and racism, and grinding poverty amidst huge wealth. Just a few minutes north of Ocala is Anthony, a bucolic land of open space and huge oak trees where John Travolta and his wife have built their home and life. John drops into the local Publix now and then and Bel sees him at the meat counter. And everywhere, the trees. Huge live oaks dripping with moss, and spindly elms so thick you can’t walk, and everything in between. I love the trees in this part of Florida.
Today a neighbor of Bel’s invited us to a Christmas Chorale at her church on the “other side of town”. Another neighbor stopped by yesterday with a small new space heater, worried about her in the cold. 
