First Snow and Ice of 2024

The January winter storms have hit and covered much of the Willamette Valley with snow and a crust of ice.  Power lines are down, and it seems like half of my friends up and down the valley are without power, or their wells have stopped, or trees have come crashing down near or onto their houses.  The city has closed public parks and bike paths.

We’re lucky to be in a part of Eugene that seems to have robust power transmission.  I believe the last time we were without power was due to someone speeding down Willamette Street at something like fifty miles per hour and smacking into a power pole (Willamette Street is straight, so they would have had to work a little bit to hit a pole at the side of the road).  

The time before that was a strange occurrence: lightning overhead caused a mechanical switch (maybe a line arrester) at the top of a pole near our house to trip.  I’m guessing that the lightning caused an induction surge in the transmission line.  Only houses on our side of the block were without power, but some linemen came and used a very long (and insulated) cherry-picker type tool to flip the switch closed.  

Luckily, the temperature has only gotten into the mid twenties, so the animals can go outside when they need to.  Aoife doesn’t appreciate the snow on her paws—although one of her plush toys, a fox, has turned into an icicle that she likes to chew. The cats only want to be outside for a short period of time, mostly so they can stalk songbirds attracted by the suet we’ve put out .  The snow is covered with a crust of ice; walking is not too bad as the ice is bumpy and dry.  

Today it’s supposed to be sunny—it’s currently sunny in Corvallis—but at the moment it is still overcast with diffuse light bouncing between the white ground and the grey clouds.   But there’s a Winter Storm Warning issued for today through tomorrow morning, so maybe all we’ll get is deeper grey.  

I think an expedition for chocolate may be in order.

Holiday Break

The winter holiday is upon me!  I've taken a large swathe of time off with the vague notion that I will write and do various projects.  The first thing that I've discovered is that I'm going to be writing in the morning, I really need to wake up about two hours beforehand to get things like exercising, showering, eating, and generally waking up out of the way.  I also need to maintain a list of tasks to do besides writing.

Aoife has figured out what Postal, FedEx and UPS trucks sound like—apparently, it's pure evil.  Whenever one pulls up anywhere on our street, she goes into high alert, determined to kill whomever it is out there who is obviously a homicidal fiend in human form bent on deeds of depravity and trespass.  She's pulled the brass hood off of our door's mail slot twice since the holiday delivery season began, prompting Mark to replace it with a tasteful wood cover.  

Saturday was the last day of clear skies, and the grey overcast has returned.  I was able to take some photographs of Mars near Aldebaran and the Pleiades, and later the next morning the waning moon.  To my surprise, as I was crunching around on the frosty deck, one of the local hummingbirds came and visited the fountain.  Mark had been raking, and when he realized I was photographing them, he thoughtfully froze.  All I can say is that I am glad I'm not a little hummingbird sticking my bare bird feet into running water on a 30F morning. I don't know how the little things stay warm. 

The first weekend of vacation was taken up with holiday preparations.  We attended an in-person gathering of the cousins on the Burridge side of the family—out-of-state family stayed out of state, and various folks with children cancelled with child ailments; so while it was sad not being able to see everyone, the gathering was less boisterously overwhelming.   The Zoom Gathering was stereotypically Zoom, with a little bit of lag, odd camera angles, muting issues, thrown in to keep things hilarious.  We will have to host a outdoor gathering some time in the spring or summer when more folks can attend in person.

Sunday I went shopping at the local Holiday Market.  I enjoy shopping, much more so than Mark or The Child, and when I go alone, I'm able to do the reconnoiter-commando-raid style of shopping.   In addition to visiting with some of my vendor friends, I made several new best friends by wrapping myself up in a storybook glamour of the green and grey wool cloak, the Assassin's Creed hooded vest (with green shimmery paisley), a pewter Green Man pendent, extra rings, black KN95 mask, and my unbound hair.   Everyone seemed more interactive than I recall from previous years; I'm going to guess that the last two years of COVID has the extroverts overcompensating, myself included.  

The only downside of shopping at the Holiday Market is that I have to remind myself that I'm shopping for others and not myself.  And that I'm a solitary practitioner and not someone in a jewelry coven.  And I'm sure that I have enough ritual jewelry.   

Weekends and Cafes

Saturday was a warm and sunny day, and a little warm (50's) for January.  Mark and I went for a 20 minute walk in the sunlight toward a coffeehouse (where I had a birthday gathering a few weeks ago).

By the time we got there, I had unzipped my vest and jacket, and taken off my fingerless gloves.   I stayed and wrote for about two hours.  The place is nice, but always filled to capacity when the university students are in.  When I left I had the wistful notion of wanting to write at home at a table with tea and savories on hand.  So, on the walk back home, I stopped at the local store and got materials for quiche.

Saturday night (between the NPR radio show Wait-Wait and the Netflix showing of Solo) I put together the quiche.

Sunday had a slow morning with tea, quiche, researching Circe's animal transformations, and the Sunday Baroque radio show.  And researching the decayed matter that forms the spent crystalline carbon and oxygen cores of white dwarf stars.   Sunday morning was much more cold and grey than Saturday--church goers are scraping ice off of their cars, and the sun is a faint pearl in the sky.

By 11:30 the fog was burning off, and the sky was tempting me to write outside--where it's probably still a little cold.

Queen Anne's Lace on Ice

Today's adventure involved tromping out to the Amazon Slough and taking photographs.  This was is probably the most interesting; icy snow (or snowy ice, I'm not sure which) had collected in the dried remains of last fall's Queen Anne's lace.

Ramparts of Ice

 It's been really cold in Eugene.

I walked into work, which was fun.  The university closed a little early Friday, and the streets have been very slippery. The ride on the bus home was interesting (and much longer than usual).

 I've had my obligatory sledding accident.  We nosed into a sidewalk curb instead of swooshing over it.   Luckily I haven't cracked my spine, so I have use of both legs -- although sitting is uncomfortable.

 Saturday was cold, dry and clear, and I went out with Mark's camera to take some pictures in "magic light."  Since we're about two weeks away from the Winter Solstice, from dawn to 9:30 AM and then from 3:30 PM to dusk we get lots of slanting, ruddy sunlight (at least when it's not cloudy).

 Obligatory water tower photograph.

 Sunset through the trees.

 We live within walking distance of the city reservoir up the hill, and I discovered that it's a giant, two-block large icicle machine.  Alas, I made this discovery at dusk.

 This frozen door reminded me of the door in C.S. Lewis's "The Last Battle."  I was getting cold (I had to take my gloves off to work the camera buttons, which were cold), and it was getting dark.  The moon was nice, but Mark's camera doesn't have a zoom lens.

 So... I forced myself to be up before dawn the next day.  I girded myself with extra layers--including fingerless gloves under thick ski gloves--topping it all off with the grey-green wool cloak.  The cloak came in handle for covering my less-gloved hand and the camera, and prevented frostbit fingers.

 At first, I thought the trees would block the sunlight going through the icicles.

 The moss was still green, and made a contrasting background for frosted spiderwebs.

 I think this is my favorite shot of the day.

 Mark's camera is thinner than mine, and I was able to get it behind the curtain of ice.

 After about fifty photos, I realized that I was taking the same picture over and over ... and... it's frozen water.  Also, the sun was getting higher and the light was loosing it's "magic" quality.  And my toes were freezing.

 I was trying to keep my hands from freezing, so I tried to refrain from taking more photos.  Yeah; right.  I thought a drain cover surrounded by snow was funny.

 I dusted the snow--it's dry and perfect for skiing--over the cover to bring out the salmon.

 Mark told me about a near-by holly tree.

 In other weather related news, Mark froze soap bubbles and took some photographs.  These are all his.

 Today's sun has been slowly melting the bubble from the bottom up.

 These are from about 10 AM.

Winter Brain

This morning, as I snoozed under the covers and tried to gather enough motivation to arise, I thought about last night.  Last night I turned on my night-brain by starting to work on a manuscript around 9PM.   Almost two hours later Mark was cajoling me to go to sleep.  I could have easily stayed up until 1 AM.

I'm coming to the conclusion my sleeping and writing habits are connected to my winter brain. I was speaking with Ellen S about how writing in the morning was easier in July and she said, "It's the lack of light that makes it harder to get up."  We live about an hour's drive south of the 45th parallel, and the daylight right now is from about 7:10 AM to 4:45 PM.  The darkness is even more pronounced on rainy days.  On the plus side, we get "magic light" for photography starting about 3 PM.  I think the reduced light makes me channel my inner Ingmar Bergman.

Or else it prompts me to sleep from 2 AM to 10 AM.

During November, December, January and February, it's more difficult for me to work with my lexical brain and easier to work with my iconic brain.  It's not that I can't write, it's simply more difficult to work with words over a sustained period of time--and working with graphics becomes easier and more rewarding.  I'm not sure if the part of my brain that plays with images less active in the summer or stays at the same level.  

The Baby Elephant

We went to the zoo over the holidays to see the baby elephant, Lilly.

She was about 3 weeks old.

The morning was foggy and cold, I was glad I had gloves and a wool cloak. Luckily, it wasn't raining. As long as I kept moving, my feet didn't get too cold.

We got to the zoo relatively early and joined the throng winding its way down the paths curving around the Pacific Northwest exhibit, past the spuming coastal exhibit, and the investigated by the health department restaurant, to the elephant house.

There was a queue to go into the sturdy, blocky building, which usually isn't the case. Inside was slightly dark and dank; the building must be about fifty years old, so it looks like a giant cage -- I'm guessing the plexiglas between the zoo-goers and the gigantic bars holding back the elephants is only slightly younger than the rest of the building.

Behind the bars, eating a breakfast of hay, were Lilly and her mother. I took a few photos of the elephant when we got closer. People were mostly polite and aware of the folks behind them. The most surprizing thing to watch was how much of an infant Lilly still is, even though she is the size of a small pony. We always equate large animals with grown ones, but the way she moved her trunk and leaned against her mother was very infant like.

After the elephants, we went to the Safari Section of the Zoo to see the Lions, Tigers, Cheetahs, and Leopards. The Lions and the Tigers were distant. The Cheetahs and Leopards, however, where hunkered down against the inclement weather in window bays (conveniently lined with straw). I'm not sure that I'd want a large window in my bedroom for people to peer at me through, but the cats seemed pretty adept at ignoring us. I got some nice close-up pictures of them.

The sea lions -- large and graceful within the blue water, like shadows of dark clouds meeting. -- reminded me that sometimes it's better to enjoy what you're looking at directly, rather than constraining it to a finder frame.

Winter Solstice Fire

Yesterday, I bought some beeswax candles so I can be ready for the Solstice.

Every Winter Solstice, around noon, I like to use a magnifying lens to ignite a match and then set the flame on a candle. From that candle, we light the candles in our fireplace and then watch them as the day grows darker.

This year the solstice is 9:30 PM on Dec 21, so I'm calling the noon of the 21st the Solstice Noon. If it is not too cloudy, stop by with a candle after noon and I will light it with solstice fire. Um, no, I'm not going to sing any Doors songs or do a re-enactment of Rent.

Hmmm.  Maybe I can light the BBQ with solstice fire too....

More On The Outdoor Shrine

I went through my photos and made a collage of the "temple" Mark found last weekend. It's hard to believe that we were there only last week.


I'm still trying to articulate what I like about the place.  Maybe it's the repeating geometric elements, like these pillars.  Or perhaps it's the faux-oldness of the place.  This structure can't be much older than sixty years. 


Or maybe it's the play between the natural and the cultivated; between geometric shapes like circles and pillars and fractal ones like the trees; between stone and water.


But mostly, I think it has something to do with it being an outdoor shrine.  While making photographic discoveries, I had a sense of the elemental and of enclave.  I don't want give the impression that I was frolicking with Flower Fairies, or waiting for Ents; but there was a current there -- something vast and mysterious:  like where a river meets the ocean, or where two tree trunks make a portal, or when the moon rises over a desert mesa.

Observations from Sunday

While were were in Redmond, a fierce windstorm blew into the Willamette Valley. Our first warning came from an IM I got while we were exploring a lava tube cave: one of our friends wanted to know if our house had power.

It was about 3:30 PM. Mark drove. We gassed up the car and began the trek from Redmond, through Sisters, and along Highway 126, the McKenzie Highway, to Springfield and Eugene.

As we approached the Hoodoo Ski area, the driving rain turned to a blizzard. The snow was wet, and we were glad that we had opted not to ski that day, as Saturday's snow had been wet and sticky. This snow would be worse (or better, if one didn't want to wind up skiing too quickly).

As we descended the western slopes of the Cascade Mountain range, the snow turned back to rain. But the tops of the trees were swaying, and every now and then a gust would rush up against the car.

We were about ninety minutes from home. We passed the new Ranger Station, and began to see LTD Bus stop signs. But the farther into the Willamette valley we got, the more we started to notice small branches on the highway. The small branches turned into larger branches. At one point the highway was covered with a dirty white, mashed pulp of pine -- which smelled nice.

We approached Blue River. "Whoo!" Mark said, "Don't touch the car, I think I drove over a power line!"

"What?" I'd been too busy looking at the trees on the side of road.

Then we passed three road flares underneath a line sagging from a leaning power pole. A little farther, a line of brake-lights stopped us. Mark pulled up and stopped the car.

On my side, I watched smoke rising from the chimney of a rural home. Its owner was prominently puttering about his front yard not looking suspiciously at the line of cars.  Mark rolled down his window, and we smelled woodsmoke from the widely spaced houses and cabins lining the highway.

Someone was out of their vehicle and speaking to a red SUV idling in front of us. Words like, "blocked" and "two hours" were all I heard of the snatches of conversation. The SUV made a hard turn and went the other way.

By this time it was around 5:15. We waited for the blockage to clear. Headlights in the distance turned out to be ODOT cars or the occasional fellow traveler turning around. Through the rain streaming down the windshield, I saw a damaged filbert orchard. Snapped limbs littered the field and here and there trees were blown over, their roots pulled out of the water-saturated soil.

Going back up the mountains, a small white car approached; it stopped every few cars. When it reached us, the driver said, "There's been a landslide, it will be a four or five hour wait before they clear the road." Then she drove off (it turned out there were only downed trees and power lines, but it did take about five or so hours to clear the road).  At this point I pulled out my secret stash of chocolate and passed it around.

There was poor to no cell phone coverage where we were. We decided to look for a restaurant. And a place to pee. Mark pulled the car around and we drove back to Blue River. He was able to get some ODOT alerts on his phone, but they were vague, saying only that there was storm damage and that maintenance would cause three hour delays.

I called my Mom -- my folks had been in Redmond also and had been on the road home a little before us. Luckily, the route they took had been clogged and limb-strewn but clear for them to get through (though not without worries over possible punctured tires). We decided not to try to get more ODOT information via Mom-net, and told her we'd call her back later.

Then we tried to find a place to eat. As we left Blue River, I noticed a homeowner had lit two tiki torches outside her home. Then I noticed folks hanging out on their front porches watching the rain and traffic. It wasn't night yet, but the afternoon was grey and I noticed no one appeared to have lights on in their houses.

"I think the power's out," I said. The later it got, the more more apparent it became that all the country stores and taverns, the Pepsi and Coke machines standing outside gas stations were dark.

Mark pointed out blinking LEDs in junction boxes high atop power poles. "I've never noticed them blinking before," he said. We guessed they would help maintenance folks pinpoint a systemic power failure. We drove past the 365 Christmas store -- closed. We drove past a hotel -- closed. The last store for 50 miles -- dark.

At last we gave up and turned back to see if the highway was clear. We drove past a tavern and supply store; it was open -- or at least there were people inside -- but only because someone illuminated the check-out counter with the headlights from their jeep.

We had to detour through Blue River again; ODOT had closed the section of highway were we'd drove over power lines.

The way to Eugene was still blocked.

By now it was 7:15-ish. We had a discussion; it was too late to try to drive back up to the probably-by-now icy pass and then try to sneak past any downed trees my folks had avoided. In the dark. The McKenzie River corridor appeared to be without power, but we had enough snacks so we wouldn't starve. We had enough gas in the tank to not worry too much about running out. Mark knew of a place further up the river that might be open. So we went back up the valley.

Our fourth pass through Blue River, Mark stopped to talk with the flagger, but all she knew was that there was road maintenance. As we continued east, other drivers behaved oddly aggressive, and we surmised they were tired, hungry, and irritated at the blocked road.

Mark drove us into the deepening darkness and rain. Everywhere along the road were empty and shadowy gas stations and cabins with woodsmoke streaming from their chimneys.

At last, we turned down a short, debris-strewn drive. A short dip and rise in the road later and white twinkly lights shone in the rain. A lodge appeared and we parked near the front. When I got out to see if they had any vacancies, the thrum of generators told me where their power came from.

Around 8:00 PM, we secured a room. After I found a place to stand where my cell phone worked, I let my folks know where we were. After a scanty meal of over-priced canned tuna and crackers and other food scavenged from our car, we played in their hot springs, then went to bed.

Around 9:45 the generator's thrum cut out, and the power stayed on. The hush of the McKenzie River lulled us to sleep.


What I get out of all of this is

• Wow; I'm thankful this was just a downed power line and some trees and not a tsunami or a nuclear melt-down;
• We were only twenty miles or so from a major metropolitan area, and still a storm isolated us from good information, food, and shelter;
• Other folks made interesting choices because they were stressed;
• With no information, people made guesses and then passed mis-information along to other drivers who then trusted the information and source;
• I'm glad Mark knew about the lodge; 
• I'm glad we had the means to pay for our lodgings;
• I'm glad we were able to fill up the gas tank in Eastern Oregon; and,
• I'm thankful that the biggest impact this adventure had was to give me some source material for story-crafting

When Writers Ski

Saturday the family went on a ski-trip. My fantasy about skiing and ski-trips is gauzy and rose-colored. We get onto a lift, which takes us to slopes where we disembark and swoosh downhill on the powder, all holding hands and singing The Lonely Goatherd; repeat, and add cocoa by a roaring fire in the lodge. The reality is that I'm an intermittent skier at the beginner level and everyone else would like to imitate an avalanche on the double-black-diamond trails. If there were parachutes involved it would be a different story. So skiing turns into a strategy to ditch everyone.

Swooshing down the slopes was a last-minute decision for me. My memory was that we went two years ago. When we were talking about it, Mark reminded me that I haven't been skiing in about four years. Mark doesn't ski, he snowboards. I don't really ski so much as I RollerBlade.

The biggest lesson I brought away from the skiing was: whoa, I am so totally out of shape. I expected that pushing through snow to turn would be difficult, but getting out of the lift chair was harder than I remembered; I felt like I looked like my grandmother trying to get out of an easy chair. Getting pushed into the snow by the lift as I exited probably didn't help. And this was the "easy rider" lift on the bunny hills. The secondary thing was that it took my body a little longer to remember how to do things than I thought it would.

Eventually, I was ready to graduate from the bunny slopes with the brightly colored traffic cones (so fun to swoosh around!) and reacquaint myself with the beginner's trail.

A blizzard hovering on the edge of a rain storm dumped snow onto the area. Snowflakes melted on my goggles. Icicles hung from pines. The lift operators had to squeegee snowmelt off the seats before we sat in them. So the snow wasn't exactly the best, but that was fine with me because I wasn't freezing my fingers off, either.

While riding the lift, the dichotomies of the day were especially striking. On one hand, the snow hushed everything; on the other, loud music (first country, then hip-hop) played. I sat alone on the lift, isolated on a seat dangling from a cable; but there were skiers and snowboarders ahead of, behind, and below me. I glided along tree-tops, with wind whistling snowflakes around me, surrounded by a wintry wildland; and then I passed a black lift tower, its spinning wheels tugging the steel cable along. I only thought about what would happen if the cable snapped or the lift chair broke a few times -- mostly when the lift stopped and cable and the chairs in front of me swung like a Newtonian physics demonstration.

Suspended in nature, I ask myself questions like:

• From this height, would the snow break my fall? 
• How is this cable constructed; Is it woven; how do the chairs attach? 
• If the cable snapped, would it recoil and hit me? 
• If the chair started to fall off the cable, would I have enough time to grab the cable? 
• If I did grab the cable, would I be able hold it in such a way to keep my fingers when the cable went over a tower's wheels? 
• Or would I have to try to jump onto the tower? 

I'm not worried about me, I'm wondering how I would write a scene for a story.

And then I saw Mark, snowboarding beneath me, swooshing and swishing as he followed a trail beneath the lift. There was a moment as I was watching him and moment of admiring a stranger turned into the discovery of admiring Mark. Then the lift moved again and it was time to de-chair. By this time I had re-learned how to get out of the chair.

There was more skiing. And hot cacao.

As we left, misty clouds shrouded the mountain in mystery.

And yes; my calves are sore today.

Girdled Trees

Over the weekend I saw some trees (and ivy) that were being removed. I'm not sure if the trees were rotten, or if they wanted to remove the ivy and the trees were collateral damage or what.

In any case, I'd never seen a tree girdled this way. I imagine that a chainsaw was used. Trees move nutrients from the ground and their leaves through and just underneath their barks -- what we think of as "wood" is like a skeleton, in a tree it mostly provides structural support. Removing a band of bark all around a tree's trunk kills it.

At first I was drawn to the contrast between the curved lines of the tree and the geometric square cuts around its trunk. But looking at this photo reminds me of a pirate skull's teeth.

Winter Shadows

We thought this photo-collage would be instructive and demonstrate the power of the sun. The border between the snow and the lawn moss shows where the sun shines when it passes through the local meridian.

In about a month, around the Spring Equinox, the snow shadow would bisect the block circle around the cherry tree.

If the snow had fallen on the Winter Solstice, there would be no green in this collage.... well, maybe some from the sunlight reflecting off of our house.

By the time Summer Solstice rolls around, the sun will shine on the entire yard, except where the back fence casts its shadow.

February Snow Day

Snow is falling on the floor of the Willamette Valley. Right now there is less than an inch; Mark made it to work and he said the roads were pretty clear. I think I won't drive anywhere today though, just because the snow freaks out the local drivers. The neighbor's construction project makes the snow on the trees stand out.


The camellia must be slightly confused by the snow, as it has started to bloom. Mark likes the camellia; I wish the blooms were white, and it looks like today's snow may grant my wish.





While I was at it, I took a photo of one of the origami doves in our window. Mark made them a few years ago to catch the rising heat from the baseboard and make the leaded crystals spin.  There's no sun as I type this, but the white snow mantling everything has filled the house with tissue white light.

Why John Doesn't Quilt

My sister, Julie, likes to make quilts. Like this one:




She received a brand new sewing machine for her Birthday (today! Happy Birthday!) and offered to make a smaller version of the quilt for me. The pattern is made up of tessellated triangles.




 And because the pattern is a tessellation, I kind of went a little crazy.


The next thing I knew I was making all sorts of solar-theme designs, mostly because it's hard not to make solar-theme designs when working with squares and right-triangles.




I thought maybe if I could work with some of the triangles the top of the quilt could look like frothing water. And then I stepped back.



There's probably waaaaaay too many fish.



Oh well.