I'll take the stillness.
I'll take the fact I don't have to shovel snow. I'll take streets that are mostly dry and fairly safe to drive on in the afternoons and the luxury of not having much of anyplace to go most mornings.
I'll take the daily temperatures that produce highs, some days, that bring mist off the river. The mist, if everything goes just right, freezes overnight to appear as hoar frost the following mornings; some mornings there is enough sunlight to turn the whole landscape into a sparkling crystal panorama.
Like the best moments of a sunset, this glistening display doesn't last long. It's worth it to slow down, take it all in, before the sunlight that brings the frost to full beauty also brings it to melt.
The hoar frost has lingered long this winter. Usually there is a season for it, a period of a few short days when everything is just right for it to appear by surprise and linger on until everything is frozen over, too cold for the misting that must happen to precede it.
For now instead of snow we have hoar frost. My faith is that the snows will come, and so I sit and wait. I can read, write, and tie flies regardless.
The weather forecasts say that I may not have to wait long. In just a few days, perhaps by the time you read this, we are due for a sudden and steep drop in temperatures and some snow. How much? Wait and see.
Whether we'll get enough to bring our annual winter snowfall up to average levels, and how long it will last, is unknown. At least it's unknown to me; and every year I hear echoes of Glen Moeller's wisdom when I contemplate winter weather.
Glen farmed his land in Corvallis for many years and ran Moeller's Garden Nursery, which continues today in family hands. He was a thoughtful and insightful man who lived close to the land.
I visited with him every spring and learned much from his long view of things. One year we'd had a particularly dry year followed by a sloppy spring. He told me, "Chuck, if we start and end the annual precipitation year when we should, at the fall equinox, the difference between a normal year and the wettest and the driest year in the Bitterroot Valley over the last forty years is three-quarters of an inch."
That means that the difference between the wettest – or driest – year, if we go by a natural year that ends with fall's harvest and begins with winter's dormancy in preparation for a rebirth in the spring, is only three-quarters of an inch.
We can adjust to that.
Meantime, the owls that nest in the tall cottonwoods near our home got a bit of an early start this year; the sudden cold snap we experienced in October gave rise to their territorial calls at night, as the males outlined their territories. They don't seem to fight about it; they just seem to mark out the space they want to occupy by flying the perimeter and calling out to say they're claiming it.
This was followed by the lovely soft cooing between the males and females that continued through their usual mating season in December. Some evenings I'd stand outdoors just to listen to them.
The geese, though, have been another matter. They show up when the arctic air pushes them down. This year they didn't show until just a few days ago – the field below the house that usually has about two hundred geese on it every morning has been barren, silent and empty, until now.
Just a few mornings ago I spotted first one small band, and then another, until forty to sixty geese were circling, each small band talking to the next, backpedaling their wings and dropping their feet, landing in the field.
The geese pass directly over our house – barely more that treetop high some mornings – on their way to the field. I can stand on the back deck with my mug of morning coffee, partially concealed by the trees, and listen. I never tire of hearing that piercing wild call, so close, as they pass overhead, sometimes so close that I hear their wingbeats.
The geese know... soon the arctic chill that sends them south will be upon us.
There is beauty in the quietude of these bleak winter days, as we await the snowfall and whatever happens next.
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