Respite from the cold

I left my coat at home today! Superbowl Sunday brought us some relief from this constant highs-in-the-20s weather. It was nice to have a break. A hike was in order, so we headed to the usual hikin' spot, for a quick dash through the snow before watching the game later on. (We watch mostly for the commercials.)
I tried to christen my new camera with a woodsy couple portrait... this was the best of eight takes. Patrick never smiles when I try this.

I had lots of fun playing with macro zoom mode.

I enjoyed blue shadows on the snow, and dead grasses in the frozen lake.

These are pink azalea seed pods. Stay tuned in late May for pictures of the actual flower.

I found this bit of writing at The Wish Jar, and today it seems appropriate:

"There's a point where you can give up on winter--when temptation can enter your soul, prying its way in like cold air through the cracks in your cabin--around January sixteenth or so, and this can make you realize that February's coming, and beyond February, March. See, I don't yet realize that March will be the hardest month. Early February's the coldest, and often the snowiest, but March, strange, silent March, will be the hardest.

The danger in yielding to thoughts of spring--green grass, hikes,

bare feet, lakes, fly-fishing, rivers, and sun, hot sun--is that once these thoughts enter your mind, you can't get them out. Love the winter. Don't betray it. Be loyal.

When the spring gets here, love it too--and then the summer.

But be loyal to the winter, all the way through--all the way, and with sincerity--or you'll find yourself high and dry, longing for a spring that's a long way off, and winter will have abandoned you, and in her place you'll have cabin fever, the worst.

The colder it gets, the more you've got to love it."

~Rick Bass fr. Winter -Notes from Montana

We're having a little trouble being loyal to winter. We always do. For my own part, winter curtails my time outside. I feel limited by the cold and the ice. So many of the things Patrick and I do in the warmer months are off-limits, and I spend lots of time missing my garden. But, the joys of a warm January day: the icicles dripping, woodpeckers thrumming, the great exuberant crunches of giant steps in the snow, my legs celebrating every chance to stretch. These are good things. We'll do our best to enjoy two more months of snow and ice, to stay loyal, and appreciate the joys winter brings us.