Well, I made 13 days this year… sort of… Perhaps I’ll try again in September when things slow down for me… Two things:

1. I have decided the “going to one place” thing is a valuable aspect to the challenge.
2. When spring comes, it is really really really hard for me to sit still.  Too many things to go in search of!

It is the first day of spring, still… the air freezes my nostrils like winter.  The ground is sugar-coated and solid.

It was surely mud yesterday, and it will surely be mud later today.  Now, it crumbles and cruches beneath my feet.  Last night’s star-studded sky sucked heat from the forest floor freezing underground moisture, returning puddles – and even moving water – to solid state.

A leaf in the creek bed is decorated with crystals.

Birds, undaunted by the cold, sing their love songs.

I’m finding it harder this year to keep this commitment…

Dusk.  Two White-tailed Deer bound off for cover as I enter the woods.  Crows gather noisily from all directions to roost.  The gray sky turns grayer.

Traffic noise.  People noises…  Then a loud outburst from a Cardinal.

I wonder… Will the salamanders move tonight?

Bergman Park

No time to sit… Cleaned and repaired Bluebird Boxes… Perhaps now I see why the original Sit Spot Challenge was set February to March and not March to April…

Audubon

Couldn’t sit.  Had to walk.  Beautiful day!  A turtle day…

I walked with Sarah.  We counted at least 80 Painted Turtles on the various ponds…  This one (Spatterdock) had easily 70:

Audubon

It feels like spring today.  The sun is out.  The water is receding rapidly but ice remains – forming ballerina skirts around the trunks of trees.  As the sun warms them up, they let loose making strange noises…  like glass breaking, but not real glass… more like stage glass – break-away glass…

A mixed flock of blackbirds – Red-winged, Grackles, Cowbirds – seem to be competing for the Loudest Song award.  Geese are arguing over prime nesting sites… honking, hissing, flapping, chasing.

A hungry muskrat is not afraid of me and comes for mustard greens on the bank of the pond.

Audubon

Not so cold today.  Clear and sunny turned to that pinkish-orange.  Stars are brilliant in a black sky.

It just didn’t happen today…

The wind is brisk and bitter bringing tears that sting my eyes and make my nose run.  Inside wool socks and “Herman Munster Boots” my feet are warm and dry, but the rest of me wishes for another layer.  The soft, saturated soil squishes beneath my boots – even splashes sometimes.  With hands pushed deep in jacket pockets, my pace is quick because I know that once I descend the slight hill into the woods, there will be some shelter from the wind.

In cracks and nooks where the sun can’t reach, frozen patches of dirty snow remain.  The rest of the woods is brown and tan and gray… and only when I search for it can I find a bit of green from last year’s ferns, or a spiral of orange on a new turkey-tail fungus.

But there!  My first spring wildflower… such as it is…  the deep purply-red hood of a Skunk Cabbage.  I plunge a finger inside to see if it is true that the flower’s high metabolism generates noticable heat.  I imagine I feel it… but I’m not Really Certain.

I finally reach the log that serves as my chair and I sit closing my eyes and taking a few deep breaths to quiet my mind.  The wind rushes and roars above me, then quiets and starts again.  When I open my eyes, I see that the leafless trunks of the trees are waving wildly in the strong winds.  There are many blow-downs in these woods… and I wonder how it would feel to be nearby when one came crashing down…

Other than a few distant vocal crows, there seems to be no wildlife out and about.  Are the squirrels enjoying a wild ride in their round leaf nests high above?  Or are they nestled underground.  And where are all those cavity-nesting birds that played here a couple of days ago?

The walk from the woods to the car is even more bitter than the walk from the car to the woods was…  I will be happy to get home and into my jammies.

Bergman Park