Phenology Report

Why didn’t someone tell me how easy it could be? All I had to do was blog about it and get waylaid halfway through my thoughts. It was exactly that moment that became the inflection point.

Shall I explain? It came about in the depths of despair, as cruel iced misery bit by bit eroded yours truly (and indeed all northerners). The endgame went from normal minor annoyance to grim fatalism. Fate went long on a grinding war of attrition and for a while it held all the cards. Hope faded and is seemed winter would never end.

Punch drunk and weary I started posting a series of “Winter Vignettes”. Is it overwrought to call them a last ditch effort to preserve the zeitgeist before going down for the count? Yeah. It’s overwrought. Then again you had to be there.

Sometime after my fourth post, things changed. The noose slacked… just a bit. That’s all it took.
Hope blooms anew. There are certainly no robins in the yard but there’s at least the feeling that they’ll eventually return.

So there you have it. A new Curmudgeonly phenological observation: when the Curmudgeon starts muttering darkly about “preserving some memory of the struggle” it’s almost spring.

Other observations:

• • • • I recently used windshield wiper fluid for the first time in months. My windshield sprayers have been frozen solid since New Year’s day. Now they’re thawed again. A miracle.
      • There are no reports of trucks going through the ice but most of the permanent shacks are gone and ice travelers are mostly sticking to ATVs and sleds now. Most of the ice roads still exist but they’re in disarray. Its been so cold that the ice is super thick. It’ll take forever to break up and you could probably drive a Kenworth out there… at night. In an outbreak of sanity, nobody seems to feel like testing this theory. A few hardy souls continue fishing from tents and whatnot and sleds still move about the forest. I said the noose has slacked, not that tulips are blooming.
      • I’ve passed several snowmobiles on groomed trails parallel to the road where a sled deviated from the groomed base and faceplanted hard. One looks like it plunged halfway to China. Snowmobiles aren’t magic. Like any machine, they can get stuck. But it’s not common to see the tail end of one sticking right up at the sky. I know of two. They both look like a duck’s ass. You know how a duck will reach down to get a morsel off the pond vegetation and leave it’s ass high above water like a flag? Two sleds are like that. I’m sure their owners are going to rescue them this weekend. It’ll be a challenge. I imagine burly dudes and winches doing a very difficult nasty cold extraction. Favors will be called in.
      • Twice I’ve detected skunks on the move. They’re not true hibernators and they also breed before spring. This year it’s happening well before the conditions are good for skunk travel; the snow is exceptionally deep. Regardless, the skunks are fucking… a sure sign of winter’s fade.
      • This year, because of the deep snow, forest travel is brutally hard. Moreover, the roadside snowbanks are like walls. Twice I’ve encountered woodland critters who’ve popped out of nature onto the easy traveling road, only to find themselves trapped.
        • The first was a muskrat frantically galloping down a divided highway. The poor bastard was reluctant (or unable) to climb a 3′ snow wall to escape. So he was charging pell-mell down the median as traffic swept by him at 70 MPH. I was rooting for him but he’d drawn a bad hand. The high snow walls were canyon-like and I was trailed by a handful of log trucks driving exactly like log trucks drive. Good luck buddy.
        • The second example was a gaggle of seven deer that trotted out of a packed dense forest on a narrow trail and from there onto a forest dirt road. I slowed but they didn’t see me until they were already on pavement. The other side of the road had the continuation of their trail but seeing me they instinctively fled down the road to put distance between themselves and my hood. Unfortunately, they got penned up. With chest high walls of snow on either side and an idling Dodge behind them, they had no better idea than to trot nervously down the road. Patiently, I followed. I trailed them for a good quarter mile of first one and then another nervously looking over it’s shoulder at me. They looked haggard and resigned, as if to say “please please don’t flatten us, we’ve had a hard winter”. I was more than magnanimous, I know the feeling. Finally one gathered its strength and jumped straight out from the road; over the snow wall and into… well neither me nor the deer knew what would be out there. After the mighty leap, the whole damn deer disappeared into the snow. Whoa! Must have landed on the snowdrift over a ditch? An instant later it popped back up. Good! Terrified, it made a second wild, desperate leap. Two feet gained and it’s head and shoulders were now above the enveloping snow. Two more leaps and it neared the canopy cover of an old pine. Its deer peers and I forgot each other as we watched in rapt attention. It desperately floundered another hard fought five feet and then it was free. It dashed off into the dense (and less snowbound) cover. You could practically see the remainder of the deer sigh as if to say “Really? We’ve got to do that?” They made the crossing in single file. One after another; none making that first leap willingly. All the while the dwindling group left on the road glanced at me idling far behind. I don’t know if they were afraid of the Dodge or wolves which, if one had showed up, would’ve picked them off like a buffet line. When the last one made it back to the woods I breathed a sigh of relief.
      • I don’t usually feed deer but this year I made an exception. On the way home I picked up two 50# bags of cracked corn. I dumped a bag in the snow near one of my old apple trees. (A spot the deer were visiting until the snow got too deep about a month ago.) I haven’t generated much deer activity but the ravens and squirrels had a huge party. Oh well.

And that’s the phenology report from Curmudgeon Compound.