The rain started in earnest. I went out and walked toward the creek. A quick’ning rill bore leaves and letters down along the route I walk each morning, back behind the hill.
I walked two miles, until my clothes were sodden.
The far shore of the bay had disappeared. Cold water fell in droplets from my beard. My feet grew damp from rivulets I’d trod in.
And then the nearer shore was gone, and then a snowy egret landed on the tracks as some rough feeling struggled in my heart: a melancholic joy. The pallid fact is that I’ll never pull the two apart.
A bird flushed to my left: A Bewick’s wren.
I suppose, hidden in the bitter-cold, snow flurries outside my window is a hint of spring somewhere. Ten days away and yet it seems more like a month or two. Although the ospreys seem up to rebuilding, and there were a huge bunch of robins working hard in the near frozen tundra soil of the Finch arboretum; i can always hope.
But i do love the sight of snowy egrets and blue herons. Onward Spring, come on, we can use you.
You’ve got a whole arboretum just for finches? Is it a field of oil sunflowers and thistles?
No Chris, that is the name of it, well actually the John A Finch Arboretum. Full, not so much, with avian life as with rodentia, a few thistles but no safflowers. The city/county of Spokane and the various rodent species have worked out this truce it seems wherein the rodents get to root around all over the grasslands, as long as they stay away from the trees (there are a couple of thousand of them). Beautiful rolling landscape through which a large year-round creek drains, first through a rhododendron grove sandwiched in a zen garden environment, then down a cascade canyon to a lush temperate zone with large ferns and other water plants, finally through some open stretches towards a smaller cascade betwixt hardwood trees and into the large water lily and typha latifolia (wow i actually know that name) pond. Really great trees and a mile loop trail that allows for a great frisbee tag and toss workout. Depressingly or not, it has attained its own wikipedia entry, though Manito park is much more expansive, though focused more specifically on flowering plants.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_A._Finch_Arboretum