Ice Breaking

I’m sitting here, my ice breaking in a glass of gin & juice, tired, mostly, from a trip back to see my mom and brother and family, but glad I went to see them, and glad that, along the way, I sensed — smelled, maybe — the ice breaking on winter’s grasp.

Just a few weeks ago, the ice crackled along the edges of the Potomac River in Alexandria, Virginia. Gulls stood awkwardly at the edges, even as night rushed in.

My friend Angela and I thought Duchess wouldn’t likely hang out in DC much longer, so we returned to Union Station to take a few more photos. As it turns out, Duchess been seen a couple times since then, but with less frequency. Surely she feels it, that growing crackling change?

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(Angela pointed out that there’s no big reason to be ultra-patriotic with the snowy owl pics — it’s a Canadian bird after all — but the colors do show off its plumage.)

While I visited, the snow it left the Blacksburg trees outlined as if they were drawn in chalk, but just for the morning; by the afternoon, all the snow had disappeared.

And on the drive home, I pulled over to snap this pic:

There’s something in the pink of the clouds that signals the very start of spring, to me.

I’m listening for it, all these cracks where the life floods in.

(Sorry, that was a terrible paraphrase/plagiarism of the Leonard Cohen song, “Anthem,” and its lines:

There is a crack a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.”)

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Speaking of change, speaking of cracks in a life: I’ve just had a non-nature essay published, about my attempt to repatriate a classmate’s ashes from Mexico. Thanks so much to Joyland Magazine for giving The Festival of Lights a home. I’d love to hear your thoughts — the essay and my classmate, Justilien Gaspard, came to mean so much to me.

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Oh, and one more quick thought: tomorrow at noon EST, Knowable Magazine is hosting an online event on the Culture of Birds. I can’t attend, but would love to hear all about it if you can. And please let me know also — what signs of spring, or other changes, if any, are you seeing in your neck of the woods?

As always, I hope you have a wanderful (rest of your) week.