John Burridge

We're still in Winter: a cold snap, 15F, is predicted for the middle of the upcoming week.  

Meanwhile, we've been enjoying the comparatively balmy mid- to upper-forties.  Saturday, I went to the Cascades Raptor Center; the sun was direct and at a low angle, which always makes photography difficult.  I was able to photograph two resident birds outside of their aviaries:  Jake, a peregrine falcon,  and Taka, a swainson's hawk.  

The new thing I learned on this visit is that Eowyn, the ferruginous hawk, is aggressive about her food and is fed through the grating on her carrier.  Over the last two or so years that I've been visiting, the birds typically will alight on a perch or hover at a handler's direction for food; this was the first time I'd seen a bird strike at a falconer's glove.  It was yet another reminder that the center's residents are not tame pets. 

I suppose that some day I'll have to engineer a weekday visit to the center -- my intuition is that there's fewer visitors during the weekday, and a wider variety of resident birds are more likely to be outside of their aviaries for enrichment.  

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Saturday, Mark and I had the house to ourselves, so we watched the remake of "The Boys in the Band."  I'd seen and read excerpts of it way back in the eighties when I was at Reed, but never the whole play or movie.  It's supposed to be one of those things that Every Gay Man Should See.  We laughed at the witty repartee, especially at the beginning; but (most of) the characters became meaner (and more drunk) as the story progressed -- which did make me wonder why the characters spent time hanging out with each other.  I would have to agree with one review I'd read:  "a historic reminder of sadder times."  

While we were discussing the movie, Mark and I decided that "The Boys in the Band," "Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf," and to some extent, "The Lion in Winter," all have Dysfunctional Party Games in them.  We weren't sure if this was a reflection of party/cocktail society at the time, or if "contests as a means of self-discovery" was a theme of sixties culture.

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Sunday morning we took the Aoife out to Zumwalt Park.  The reservoir is still quite low; it feels like we could walk along the bottom of it all the way to the marina.  

I took my camera hoping for photographs of various raptors or waterfowl, but none put in an appearance.  So I took pictures of the dog among the violets instead (lightly lamenting that nature had pulled a mean trick on the violets and that in two days all the blooms would freeze to death).  

The ornamental cherries or plums or apples or whatever are blooming.  As I walked home after Wordos the other night, one had sprung open and was illuminated by a street light.  Tree blossoms reaching for sodium lights makes a quiet spot along the street.  The only sound is the slight hum from the light, and the occasional car on the next street over.  The petals glow against the night sky.

This morning, I noticed more trees had opened, and that here and there along the streets were swaths of pink and white.  It feels early for the blooms, as we're only three quarters through Winter.  Even the frogs croak up a chorus from the slough a few blocks away.  I guess the higher temperatures last week have started various cycles early.

Thursday morning it started to snow.  When I went to work, the flakes were large.  And dry.  The roads weren't too bad, but I was able to skid and spin out when I tested the traction on the road.  Going about 20 mph was fine.  The local school district held classes (but other near-by ones did not).

And then it snowed and snowed and snowed.  By the time I left work, pulling out of intersections was tricky, and the wheels usually spun out before the car would move forward.  And then there were a few times when the car lurched in some diagonal directions not quite matching the general forward motion of the car.  By this time we had about eight inches of snow on the ground.  Most parents with children had pulled them out of school by noon rather than wait for the snow to pile any higher.

I declined to sled down any hills, as I didn't want to re-live last snow-day's crash into the sidewalk curb.


So I walked to work Friday.  The snow flakes were even larger.  During the night there had been some freezing rain, so the snow crunched when you walked through it. The snow was still dry, but the additional ice on the roads made me glad I live close enough to walk to work.  The copes of trees near the Amazon Slough were frozen cathedral columns of white and sable.

The University waffled on if they were going to be open or closed, saying that they would be starting classes at 10 AM and requiring staff to be at work normal hours, but then cancelling classes at 9:30 AM (which I'm sure made the travelers who set out at 9AM joyful).

And it snowed and snowed and snowed.  There was a horrible pile-up on I-5 near Albany.  Someone slid into the blue metal heron sculpture near the entrance to campus.  And more snow fell.  I rode the bus partway home and walked a few blocks in the falling snow, past the copes with my hands held out, like some pilgrim between the snowy veil in a cathedral.

Some time in the evening, the snow turned into a mixture of snow, sleet and rain.  The snow on the cars, walkways and trees became glazed.  This morning, Saturday, the precipitation is primarily rain, and icicles are forming on everything.  I wasn't going to take photos of ice all over everything, because I'm sure if I look back at old photos from twelve years ago I'll find my cache of photos of plants and fences with ice all over them... but then I did.

I hope our magnolia tree makes it through the next few hours, because it's looking sad, and may illicit haiku.

Rain and warmer temperatures are forecast for tomorrow.

I can feel that I'm battling a cold.  All I want to do is sleep, and yesterday evening, I got chilled.  Granted, I think the heat had turned off where I was, but still.  Wearing a bunch of layers and having a cup of soup helped.