Posts Tagged ‘moonlight’
From Nowhere
Luckily, I don’t bet on my sports fan hunches. I didn’t expect the Gopher football team to snatch the victory in their game Saturday afternoon. I didn’t expect the Blue Jays to lose Game 7 of the World Series. I firmly doubted the Vikings were going to get the better of Detroit yesterday.
I was not surprised that the order to once again change the clocks back an hour to Standard Time would disorient activities associated with my sleep, the feeding times for animals, and bedtime for Asher. It seems to me that an agreement will never be reached to settle on a year-round, consistent time rule in the USA.
Humans are so intelligent, we should leave the clocks alone and change the hours of our activities if there is a need to do things only when it is light outside. Another option would be to put a big mirror out on the edge of Earth’s atmosphere to reflect sunlight on our population centers for the hours when natural daylight is shorter than our lifestyles demand.
We had some fine-looking moonlight glowing through the clouds last night after the hour-earlier sunset had transpired.
Cyndie and I spent the middle of the day yesterday seeing Jeremy Allen White’s impersonation of Bruce Springsteen in the movie “Deliver Me from Nowhere.” I went in with little knowledge of the storyline and came out much better informed about the Boss’s struggle with depression in the heyday of his early success.
It was a powerful depiction of how the weight of childhood stress can become too much to carry as adults if never addressed.
A lot of improved health can be achieved when seeking help from professionals sooner in our lives. I sure wish I had recognized my condition a lot earlier than I did.
Having successfully treated my depression has helped me immensely to cope with common stresses, like twice-a-year clock changes, for example. I might whine about it, but it doesn’t push me into the dark world of dysfunctional thinking that was a hallmark of my experiences.
Being delivered from nowhere is a precious thing, indeed.
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Watching Steps
We now have just enough of a snow blanket to conceal areas where ice has formed from hydrostatic pressure pushing water to the surface. There is a short curve in our North Loop Trail that gets frequent use, and it has become rather precarious as a result.
When surveying the variety of tracks in the paddock, I noticed that the horses are keen about staying off Paddock Lake.
Yesterday morning, I was looking around the mound that protects the area where drain tile from the barn reaches the air. Just beyond that, a broad span of ice builds up from runoff. It is not entirely clear what happened there, but my first thought was to question why the horses would have risked walking on that mound of ice.
It looked like somebody had laid down there. My second perception involved the possibility it was an unintended lay down as a result of a slip. Yikes. Happily, none of the horses showed any sign of injury.
On the other hand, we do have Mia behaving unusually. She doesn’t seem like she is in any pain, but something seems different. She is more distant than usual and becoming more solitary, isolating herself from the others more than normal. We haven’t seen her drinking water recently, but she was eating more normally yesterday. There is no evidence to lead us to believe she isn’t drinking when we’re not around to observe.
Last night, Cyndie went out to check on Mia after dark. With the sky clear, the moonlight was brilliant and Cyndie took a picture of her in the hay field.
The streak of light is a passing car on the road.
We are hoping the warmer weather expected over the next few days will reinvigorate Mia and dispel any concerns about her overall health.
We would welcome a break from the nagging feeling there is something more we should be doing for her.
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Sunrise Greeting
Wednesday morning, as Cyndie was making her way in the sub-zero cold with Delilah for the first walk of the day, she captured this wonderful view of Dezirea, alone in the back pasture as the sun climbed above the eastern horizon.
Thank you for sharing, Cyndie!
Last night, when I stepped out with the dog for her last walk before bed, and to roll the garbage bin down to the road, we were met by the magical glow of winter moonlight. It is such a striking contrast from the inky blackness we experience here on a moonless summer night.
Our end to the day was a nice bookend to the start that Cyndie captured at dawn.
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Didn’t Work
As Delilah and I were walking through the woods on Sunday morning after the overnight accumulation of perfectly powdery snow, we came upon a loose strand of spider web blowing in the breeze, still covered with a collection of flakes. I suppose it might have been the weight of the snow that pulled the line from the web in the first place.
I hastily tried to capture a shot of it with my camera, but before I could successfully set the macro and frame the snowy strand, it broke away and fell to the ground.
It became another image for the batch of those that didn’t work.
Last night as I took Delilah out for her final evening stroll, I was surrounded by incredible beauty, all of which would land in my batch of “didn’t work” images if I tried to capture the scenes with my pocket camera.
The December super moon was illuminating the freshly fallen snow and giving off a priceless glow. How amazing the difference between this experience and the darkest moonless nights of summer around here. There was no need for a flashlight last night.
The sky wasn’t entirely clear, and some high wisps of cloud occasionally reflected a circle of light around the giant ball of cheese. It was simply spectacular. The kind of thing you want to immediately share with the world. You’ll have to take my word for it. I didn’t get any pictures.
It was a “you had to be there” performance.
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Moon Lighting
Yesterday afternoon, we were out walking and I decided to find the skeleton of the buck that was in our woods. I wanted to retrieve the head with antlers before any critters got around to nibbling on the antlers. As I was walking back up the hill toward the house, I spotted the moon rising in the east. I set down the deer head and stepped back to see if I could get my little camera to focus on the moon in the distance. It looked captivating to the naked eye, but I was skeptical that I could capture the view I was seeing.
It turned out okay. Not really remarkable, but sufficient in its representation of what I saw.
By the time we were turning out the lights to go to sleep, the views out our windows were aglow with a luminosity unlike anything I have seen in years. It seemed like I would need sunglasses to go for a walk. Tonight will be the full moon, but the forecast is for clouds and a chance of snow, so I don’t expect to see it as bright as it was last night.
Next month, the full moon falls on a Sunday, so if weather cooperates, that weekend could be an opportunity for a moonlight snowshoe hike.
Sounds like an excuse for a party…
Relative Something 