The most descriptive word I have heard to describe the way it has looked the last few days is "Narnia"


Snow hangs heavy on the trees and while the snow falls took a rest for most of yesterday it is back at it as I write now. Like Narnia, spring is in the air but winter is not ready to let up its grip. Mid last week we got 6-8 inches then the next day another 5 then a day and a half of rain reduced the piles by half and then another 8 inches on Friday with some pretty serious wind. Had all that rain been snow, the piles would easily be at the 3 foot mark.

So how much snow do we have? With the pluses and the minuses and the double pluses that is too much of a math problem for so early in the morning. But I'd eyeball it at 8 inches that is left.

This seems like this is the most snow we've had this year but definitely not of all the dozen years we've been here. Reminiscing last night about the snow caves the kids would build in the drifts, there has been at least another foot or so a accumulation that would need to be there to match the high points.

But spring is in the air. The morning light is stronger, the afternoon light stays longer. February is over, the longest shortest darkest month is past. Soon it will be time to patch the multitude of potholes, but that is a post in itself.

Colds Suck

Something has happened the past several weeks. Blog posts and the time for writing seem sparse and my mind is on the foggy side, which only for the past few weeks can be attributed to a head cold. The rest of it probably is a combination of a major change in the place I usually can write and many things competing for time and mental energy.

I usually get one cold a year. It comes at a time that I am overloaded with things to do and can least afford it or have just passed such a time. [yes I see the cause and effect pattern]. Colds for me often run the same course. I am usually a very good patient with major things but very impatient with the minor such as with colds or back pains or aches. My attitude is enough! lets get on with it and over it. Probably hindered somewhat that I can't really take many of the "cold remedies" without reactions that are worse that the cold. I am in the most annoying of the stages which is the coughing stage. A few days ago you'd think I was ready for a respirator and I can only truly sleep the full night in a mildly sitting up position, which is not easy to do nor that comfortable. So as the sleep gets disrupted so does the healing processes.

It will probably be over or mostly gone in a few days and I expect that when I go to work tomorrow I will be given a wide berth or glares for having spread it, though I am compulsive with the hand sanitizer and coughing in the elbow, but sometimes that is not enough.

So that is my vent about colds.

This weekend we were traveling through upstate New York. Didn't you know that traveling and hotels are good for colds? When ever we venture out that way I am always struck by how much larger the mountains and hills are than in the Berkshires. The Berkshires are hills after all and New York has the Catskills. But the valleys are wider and the passes grander and stunning.

I am noticing more how from season to season, there are many views that look the same, year after year and that it is much more evident when I have my camera at hand.

If I look at pictures of scenes from year year to year that are from about the same time of year, they are almost interchangeable.


As I have mentioned many times here, I have about a 50 mile one way commute each day to work. I think of bygone times when such a trip would have required immense planning and packing for a the long journey. It makes me remember stories my grandmother told of wagon rides over the mountains for shopping in the bigger towns that were full day events.



Now I hop on the highway and easily cruise up and down the mountains and through the mountain passes and an amount of time that would have been unimaginable when my grandparents were young.




Yet in the eight years I have been doing this commute, the views of the mountains, especially in the winter are the same as perhaps they saw many years ago. The most significant different perhaps is that the highway I travel cuts through land that is near the old main road but sometimes a hundred or so feet above as it traverses large ravines. I remember large ice waterfalls as a kid and expect that for generations and generations that was a seasonal marvel to observe.



February is sort of bleak in that much of the landscape is in hibernation. Pauses in the snowfall allow the dried out brown and dirt from the run offs to shown through. The cold wind is biting and even the dried grasses seem cold and frozen.



But the days are getting longer and the sunlight brighter. That too is something observed by many before me and hopefully many after as well.