nature | cleothedog

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Another winter storm on Friday. Drove home behind the plow. The woodpeckers and dark-eyed juncos were eating from the suet before the snow started. Then another storm. But the days are getting longer. The air and the snow feel damp; the birds are making noise; signs of early spring.

Hello friends,

I hope you’ve been staying warm and holding your loved ones close.

The first winter with a baby has felt—fast and slow, busy and quiet, isolating and full, big and small. It’s been a super cold winter for much of it, and that plus letting the wee one play on her mat and develop skills (day by day!) has kept us indoors a lot. When I come out of my bedroom after the baby and I wake up to set up for the day and see sun pouring in the windows that’s a major win.

Mother and Child by Charles William Bartlett (1900)

I can feel my brain and body continue to change, continue to rewire for complete attunement to this small individual, her needs, our bond, our family. Focusing on other things is a bit like forcing a crank to move the other way; it takes effort and is disorienting. At the same time, part of my mind is constantly aware of other things—of all the things! I’ve always been someone who both hyperfocuses and is constantly scanning and thinking three (or many more) steps ahead, and the way that has translated into an ever-growing capacity—both automatically and with WORK—to take care of my baby, myself, and my family is interesting—and tough and beautiful.

It’s been a winter of intense busyness and also rest—in all the forms, whenever possible. Seeing the pale winter sunset—white, lavender, grey blue—out of the back window when starting a nap with the baby. Creativity also brewing and overflowing, looking for vessels. Parenting takes so much and also creates so much. I think of those fountains that pour from one basin into another into another, before drawing the water up to start the cycle again.

Madre by Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida (1895)

I can think of few things as definitionally “bittersweet” as seeing a little one growing up as you are raising them. I recognize I’m only several months in, but the feeling is palpable. Every new sound and movement and shade of personality is delightful, a joy and awesome privilege to be present for, and also there’s a feeling of grief, mourning what’s already passed. Everyone talks about how “it goes so fast.” And it does. Sometimes she changes by the day, even by the hour. It feels so rapid—but there are also moments that feel slow; these might be heavy or difficult, or they might be so full of joy they are literally overflowing. For better or worse, we are stuck in it like a crumb in honey.

When she was a tiny newborn feels like both yesterday and a lifetime ago. . . .

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November 18, 2023

deciduous my lifeblood
evergreen my heart

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May 11, 2023

spring

Things are a little slower on the mountain, but spring is arriving. It’s interesting, living in the woods and in a cabin, noticing quite early on the earliest signs of spring—a little more bird sound, especially at new times of day. Even then there’s still a lot of snow on the ground. It covers everything for a long time still, and you walk on it every day. We still make fires. Obviously on one day (daylights savings) the days get longer, the sun sets later. There is more light. The texture and consistency of the snow, both the snow on the ground and trees and the snow that keeps falling, a few more times, changes. There’s a little more warmth in the air, slightly. The days get even longer.

You really start to notice it when the water starts flowing and the streams get fuller again, burbling, rushing. There are rivulets everywhere! Coltsfoot alongside them—the first-of-the-first flowers (spring ephemerals).

The robins and the mourning doves are back, thank goodness. They’re calling to each other.

There were dark-eyed juncos everywhere, around the bottom of our bird feeders, which we stopped filling, so we have been seeing fewer nuthatches and woodpeckers, though they’re still out there and I hear them, and the chickadees have stayed out. Has their demeanor changed?

We’ve been seeing butterflies again too. All other bugs are also out more again suddenly (they are not all welcome, to be frank). Now we’re making fewer fires. A lot of the spring bulbs are coming out. For a sudden warm bunch of days, we lightly re-mulched them with leaves. I just started hearing peepers and other frogs, I can even hear them from my window.

The trees are starting to bud. They haven’t leafed yet. A couple of the crocuses have just flowered.

I got a taste of spring already in my hometown—bright hyacinth, daffodils waving their heads at me, forsythia and flowering trees.

A string of unseasonably warm days is followed by a string of unseasonably cool days. Because that is the way of the weather in this state, compounded by the fact that climate change makes weather patterns and seasonal transitions more erratic.

The daffodils, tulips, and beginning of the lilies and irises are still pushing up slowly but it’s rainy and cloudy. We’re making fires again, at least for part of the day. When it’s cool I don’t hear the peepers or other frogs.

More spring ephemerals start popping up or are close—trout lilies, trillium, others I don’t know the names of yet. There are ramps in the woods. Things are getting greener, the grass, the evergreen needles. Fiddleheads are popping up, very pale green and fuzzy.

Then daffodils are finally opening here. Our first beautiful one weathered all the rain. The little ones are popping up like fairies.

It’s misty and cold here in the mornings, and then it burns off. We have some partial sun some days.

The birds are singing to each other. It’s not quite warm yet. But it’s coming.

More trees are budding, but they are going slowly; they haven’t fully leafed yet. The ash tree still hasn’t even started to bud.

We have some dry days. Some of the smaller channels of water and the huge puddles dry up. Then on wet days the channels flow again. Now we’re getting tons of rain and everything is sopping again.

Then some sunny days. More spring bulbs and other greening. Tulips are close. The trees are a symphony of different buds—different heights, colors, textures, shapes, and far along-ness.

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