Tag: Snow

Revelation and Rambling

On By trashonthemonocacyIn Environment, Monocacy River, Wildlife7 Comments

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This week has been a revelation. The melting snow has pushed the Monocacy just a little over its usual borders. It flowed from streams, trickled from sunny banks, and washed in from streets and drains. As the swelling river turned a muddy brown, the land returned to a green slightly brighter than when we’d last seen it, before the snow fell.

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For most of the week, I was exiled from “the island” by the river’s rising waters, left to gaze longingly at the carpet of green, where I knew early spring flowers were blooming. It’s the most wondrous time of year for the place, when it seems most clean and bright and promising (I’ve been known to call it “Fairyland”). But my side of the river isn’t without its own curiosities.

Again and again this winter, I’ve meant to write about the Canada Geese that travel over us in noisy flocks at dusk. It’s a particularly wintry phenomenon that I associate with clear skies and bracing cold. It seemed only fitting, then, that on winter’s last day, I watched about a hundred of them take off from the soccer field at Riverside Park.

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As they flew over the Monocacy Boulevard bridge, I noticed a Red-shouldered Hawk perched on a taller tree in the forest retention area (which got some much-needed attention only last December).

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It’s just a smudge in the distance in the picture that I took of it, and the geese merely specks, but with my naked eye it cut a regal silhouette, and I got a glimpse of its burnished chest when it glided from its perch, crossed low over the path in front of me, and headed into a stand of trees on “the island,” well out of my reach. Despite knowing that it was unlikely that I’d spot the hawk again, I hurried to the edge of the river and searched in the direction I thought it had gone. As expected, I didn’t find the bird, but I did see a tall, white American sycamore, which reminded me that I was supposed to take a picture of my favorite sycamore (because, yes, I have one) for the Maryland Biodiversity Project’s American Sycamore Facebook Blitz (because, yes, they had one). I was too late for the blitz, but I set off down the path the next day to photograph “my” tree anyway.

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Isn’t it beautiful? It’s branches like gnarled, work-weary hands, reaching for the sky?

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It even makes trash look good:

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(Needless to say, among the things revealed by the melting snow was quite a bit of trash, and I couldn’t help but think that the juxtaposition of these two things meant that someone had a pretty wild night followed by a pretty rough morning:

Or maybe it was just a few ill-conceived hours.)

An Icy Ides

On By trashonthemonocacyIn Monocacy River, Nature, ReflectionsLeave a comment

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On my walk to the river this morning, I stepped off of the main path in order to avoid meeting anyone; it was an altogether unnecessary move. Yesterday eight inches of wet, heavy snow fell, which closed the schools and brought all sorts of revelers and shovelers outdoors, but last night the temperatures plunged and winds whipped up, which is always enough to drive people back indoors in this part of the world. As I walked, my boots barely broke through the surface of the snow, which had frozen overnight, and the only other tracks I encountered were those of the deer who had bounded off a few minutes before.

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The sun was a weak light through flurry-bearing clouds, more of January than March. A week ago, I was taking pictures of Virginia spring-beauties, celandine, and bluebells, but today the most notable flora was wind-blown grass lying flattened across a dune of snow.

For me, there is beauty in both views.

A Cold Peace

On By trashonthemonocacyIn Monocacy River, Nature, Reflections3 Comments

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I like snow. While our first fall of the year didn’t amount to much, I made the most of it. My old labrador’s response pretty much sums up my initial excitement:

A  little later in the day, after rounding up my fellow explorers, I found a flock of Canada Geese loitering on the river. Usually we see them flying overhead in formation, raucously honking, bringing in the cool blue haze of a winter dusk, but last Friday afternoon they were merely drifting, skirting the light ice along the river’s edge. Eventually a small flotilla ventured over as if to investigate us, which made me wonder whether they were used to living in ponds where people fed them, but when I approached they backed off. (Which is just as well, considering I had one dog on leash who just loves water birds).

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The snow ushered in the stiff, still cold of mid-winter that settles onto me an almost inexplicable peace.As I walk, I smile at the flock of black vultures hunched in a gnarled, bare tree. I quietly watch a herd of six white-tailed deer cross the trail in front of me, leaving behind them a mess of hoof-prints in the snow. I wait for the red-tailed hawk standing sentry over the floodplain to soar from its post. It can be tempting to run from the cold, dashing from car to front door, but it’s so rewarding to hunker down and live in it for a moment.