More Sexy Snow

The feeders were HOPPIN' all through the storm. I kept them topped off, with fresh offerings scattered under the bower, the spruces and pines.


When Bill and I planted the blue spruces in 1992, I didn't even think about the fact that they'd grow up to be marvelous bird feeders. The snow never gets all the way under them. I throw a big scoopful of seed right into the tree, and the birds clamber all through the needles to get it, and cluster beneath its sheltering boughs to hide and feed. The leaning evergreen to the left is our Fraser fir from Christmas, bungeed to a post. We'll burn it come spring.


When the sun finally broke out, I went into a frenzy of photography. Dawn colors snow with the most delicate peaches and blues.


This is one of my favorite photos from the storm's aftermath. Bill and I thought it looked like our penguin had skiied into the yard. Actually, the tracks were made by ice, falling off our telephone line just overhead.

We had so much trouble with our telephone line that about five years ago the phone company came and buried it. I saw the phone guy about to take down the homely cable that runs into the house and stopped him. Where would the bluebirds, tree and barn swallows sit? Where would the Carolina wren stop to sing? Where would the yellow-breasted chat land after his flight display? The phone guy liked that idea, probably mostly because he didn't have to take it down.

Our shitepoke weathervane had never looked so true-to-life. Go ahead, click the link if you don't know what a shitepoke is, or why this photo makes those who know chuckle. I'll tell you.

Sun on the meadow was surreal. Chet and I lit out for the farthest reaches, sure we'd find a wonderland.Our ordinary path was filled with mystery.

The little bluestem bent in supplication, making a mounded fantasy landscape, a maze of wonder.

Spiky lines of young sumac pushed up, refusing a snow coat. We're not cold.


Colorado or Ohio? I couldn't tell. The transformation was complete.

The older sumac, its fruit long dehisced, was a flock of dancing cranes.

Smooth sumac still offered sustenance to the hermit thrushes, woodpeckers and bluebirds, if they could get around the snowcap.

When we finally came in, spent from thrashing through the powder and underlying crust, Chet Baker thawed himself and dried his damp brisket by the gas fire that had kept us warm the whole time. Little CatDog. He baked until he was hot to the touch. That's why he's The Baker.

I look out the window today and it is snowing again, temperatures in the twenties, ferocious windchill. A lone redwing at the feeder, too cold to konkaree. Tomorrow I begin another journey--to Honduras. While on planes and in airports, I'll try to finish up with writing about Guyana so the Honduras images and memories sure to crowd in don't wind up replacing those precious things in my addled brain. There's only so much room in there, after all.

Don't worry. I've been cooking and cooking; the pantry is full and you will have plenty of Bacon while I'm gone. But man, I won't miss this wind and these loaded gray clouds; the parka and hat.
Tonight I'll offer a sacrifice to the airline gods, cruel and capricious though they be, to get me there in a reasonable way. Cross your fingers for me? JZ

Crazy Sexy Snow

I've got two camera bodies now, my old Canon Digital Rebel XTi and my new Canon Digital Rebel XSi. When I'm on a serious photo safari, I carry both bodies, one with a long lens and one with the new 18-55 mm. landscape lens. It gives a little extra weight and cumbersomeness, but it beats switching lenses in mid-stride by a long shot.

Dawn broke, and I knew I was in for a serious snow photo safari. Ohboyohboyohboy I was jumping around like a cartoon hound.Finally, light. Finally, sun on this glittering palace of diamonds that would not last long. My chance of chances.

There were no tracks on the new-fallen snow. Time to track it up, but I snapped a record of its pristine state first.

My little spready Japanese maple was once a potted bonsai. It wasn't very happy in training, so I set it free, and now it's big enough to sit under, big enough to shade the Pig of Good Fortune, and it's where Baker goes on a hot summer day. And this day, it was encased in glass.

Th' Bacon went first, tracking up the path in his doggeh way.

He was verra happeh to be out at last, snow or no snow. He had his football letter jacket on; he was cookin'.



There were things under the snow that only he knew about, and he dug several deep holes down to the lairs of voles and shrews.

I don't know many people who would stick their whole face in the snow and enjoy it, but Th' Bacon does.

I turned around and looked back at our home, our refuge from this long storm.

The birding tower peeks up above the roof, my little writer's chamber beckoning. With the sun, it would be reasonably warm up there, even without heat, but I had pictures to take.

Farther out the meadow, a bluebird house bore evidence of the storm. We humans take a somewhat more elaborate form of shelter, but both work for our respective species.

Egad, I've been waiting for this wide-angle lens for three years. I don't know what I did without it. Now I want to go back to Guyana and shoot landscapes. Ah well. Other times, other trips.


The welljack that gives us our heat and cooking gas; that makes my Garden Pod warm and keeps us cozy all year round. I love that old thing, pumping away out there with no one to talk to.
Like many in our oil-rich area, we have free gas from this well on our land. So, uh, we don't pay heating bills.

I know. I hear you New Englanders sputtering. It's not for everybody, but there are distinct percs to living in Appalachian Ohio. You couldn't get me out of here with a crowbar and a bomb. Even when the power goes off for days at a time. Maybe especially then.

Tomorrow: More wonderland, mo' Bacon.