Winter Came Today

Winter came today. She’s been slow in coming;
autumn has held on hard and long. But when I
left my office at half past seven this evening the
cold took my breath away. (In case you’re overly
impressed by the long hours I keep, let it be said
that I don’t start at 8 like people on a proper work
week. I’m often in the swimming pool at 8, doing
lazy laps and panting for breath.) There are fireworks
going off all over the city—remember, remember, the
5th of November, gunpowder, treason and plot…
The United Kingdom is celebrating Guy Fawke’s foiled
attempt to blow up Parliament along with the gleeful
acknowledgement that blowing things up is really really
fun. So is burning people in effigy, apparently, but that’s
a little dark for me. Besides, it’s Cold outside.

I’ve been absent from this site for ages. I’m not sure why.
I was avoiding all kinds of reflection for a while, but I’m
done with that now. I’ve gone birding a few times—it feels
like a life-affirming act somehow, like a centering, leaving
all the people in my life behind for a while, getting on a bus
by myself with my binoculars around my neck and riding all
the way out to the where the River Esk empties into the sea.
Passerine migrants have been coming through—wild geese,
and sea ducks are turning up for the winter, some from the
Arctic Circle. I saw four new species of bird on my first trip—
the goosanders and wigeons were particularly exciting. The
wigeons were in eclipse, which means that their plumage is
turning and is currently a crazy patchwork of russet and brown.
Andthey had, I kid you not, bright yellow blazes on the crown
of their heads. Think little ducks with Mohawks. They were
amazing. On a more solemn note, the wild geese called when they
flew over my head and I remembered that they are the signs of
the Spirit in Celtic Christianity and wished that I could be so
innocent and so free.