More than a foot of snow snuck in the first part of this week, in the form of several small batches, so when Wednesday’s already grim Winter Storm Warning included the words “locally higher totals possible” it was a good bet Fish in a Barrel Pond would get its fair share.
The Weather Channel (not the National Weather Service) has decided that winter storms need names, in the same way hurricanes and typhoons need names. Blizzards and hurricanes don’t care what they are called but evidently TV producers feel their coverage is more compelling if we are able to somehow humanize dangerous meteorological phenomena, which is interesting because effective propaganda generally dehumanizes the enemy.
We humans name all kinds of stuff that need not be named, and I myself admit to the occasional anthropomorphic fit. A chicken I called “Tiny” was snatched away by a bear last spring and I once knew a tapir we called “Jim” because it was easier than saying “ear tag #P379” but the closest I’ve come to naming weather would have to be “that awful cold snap in ’92” or “the huge freakin’ blizzard during lambing in ’05.”
This most recent storm was given a TV name and many people will use it when they look back on this historic nor’easter. They got hammered and maybe it will help to have a name to shout as they shake their fists at the sky, but step away from the news and the roads and the towns and it was just more wind and snow.
Embrace it, endure it, or leave. Winter doesn’t offer many choices and for the better part of this past week the best option has been to endure, hunker down and hope for the best.
The sun shines brightly, through a lens of frigid arctic air, but the wind cuts like a razor and going out to do chores is, at best, a chore. Numbers on thermometers tell incomplete tales, unfeeling statements of fact, and over the years I have developed my own crude methodology to quantify cold. Completely unscientific and more than a bit subjective, it involves such things as the speed at which boogers freeze and the distance I can travel across the dooryard before I find myself doubled over and cussing. Based on those measurements, the cold this week qualifies as “pretty darn freakin’.”
It’s also darn freakin’ pretty.
After six days of hiding indoors, there’s an urge to go out, not so much to embrace the season as to defy it, so when the full moon comes up the armor goes on for a trek in the moonlight. Among popping trees and over thumping ice, coyotes howl and wind-blown snow sparkles like diamonds but after a couple of hours of that nonsense, there’s a serious urge to go in and embrace the stove.
The mixed flock of chickadees, nuthatches, and redpolls have been working the feeders through the cold. The seed they knock to the ground feeds mice and voles, which a pair of coyotes has discovered, but most other creatures in the neighborhood spent the week curled up in a hole, trying to stay warm, just like me.
Just like me, they’re also ready to get out again and this morning I saw a fox trotting down the road, looking ahead for a meal while also looking back, aware that it could just as easily become someone else’s meal. Everyone is hungry out there, after a deep snap like this, and the search for food goes on for as long as it takes. The fox risks death, taking what the coyotes consider theirs, and night creatures will work all day if that’s what it takes to survive.
With coffee in hand, I sat in my blind (which is cleverly disguised as a house) and watched a flying squirrel this morning, a rare treat. Both shy and nocturnal, I can count the flying squirrels I’ve seen on two fingers. Continue reading
There is a bewildering variety of game cameras, or trail cameras as they’re sometimes known, available on the market today, and some of the most common questions from consumers regard the camera’s resolution. I would like to take a few minutes today and go over with you some of the more confusing aspects of pixels, mega pixels, etc.
I’d like to, but I’m not going to.
The resolution I am referring to is one I am making for 2013, and it is to use my game camera more.
One of the least expensive models at the time of purchase, it is very basic, but the first night I set it out it captured a few shots of a fisher snooping around not far from the chicken coop.
Since then, it has recorded the perpetrators of unauthorized construction activities …
even under cover of darkness.
The calm days stand out around here, if for no other reason than the profound silence that descends. Straining to hear the pulse of the water, like listening for a heartbeat late at night, not even a gentle ripple laps the shore.
Shadows creep northward and the lowering sun angles through the first icy haze of the season, creating sun dogs, which are kind of like rainbows but much, much colder.
The fog and rain cleared out at the end of the second day as dry, chilly air moved in, and the hillsides lit up in the gloaming. Continue reading
Some people could use a good knock-knock-knock on the forehead to get them to stop for a few minutes, take a good look around, and see what happens when nothing happens. They get so wrapped up in themselves and the things they consider important that they forget where they are and why they are there, missing the good stuff — those small, quiet moments of near-perfection and beauty that pass quickly, often un-noticed.
I nearly knocked myself silly, this past week, before finally picking up a camera and stepping out to enjoy my favorite time of year. Now, to tie myself to a chair and force myself to post some of the pictures I took …
The members of the Neverwas Nonesuch Angling Society are wonderful people, each and every one a shining example of virtue and sportsmanship. Go ahead; ask them yourself. They’ll tell you. It’s those other guys that are the problem.
I don’t think the trout of Fish in a Barrel Pond really give a carp one way or the other. All men are equal before trout, as the saying goes, so as another season of fishing comes to an end, with the slopes of Nonesuch Mountain bathed a gaudy, autumnal glow, I take a moment to reflect on the ways of both people and fish, circa 2012. Continue reading
I have no idea how many species (or genus, for that matter) of mayfly can be found on, in, and around Fish in a Barrel Pond, but only one gets anglers all aquiver like the Hex. Hexagenia limbata is one of the most geographically widespread mayflies in the United States and in addition to being huge (two inches long or more, including tails) they are known for emerging by the millions, in swarms so thick they show up on weather radar.
Around here, they emerge in numbers closer to the dozens, but a Hex hatch is a Hex hatch and I am constantly being asked if it is on.
A newly-emerged dun on the window is hard to miss and worth a closer look. Continue reading
While driving from camp to camp, gathering garbage and used linens yesterday morning, I saw what I believe to be an immature bald eagle in a dead tree down by the swamp and got out to take a couple of quick pictures.
Eagles never look particularly happy about anything but this one seemed especially grumpy. It didn’t take long to figure out why.
It can’t be easy, trying to get a little rest with robins bouncing off the back of your head.
The View from Fish in a Barrel Pond 