Saturday, December 12, 2009

Goodbye Autumn, Hello Winter


It's been raining and cold and we haven't seen the sun for about a week—reminiscent of one new year's in Berkeley, in the early 1980s, when I counted 10 days that we didn't see the sun.

And because I grew up in Florida, I'm used to a lot of sunlight. I don't lie outside to tan any more, but if I go for too long without sunlight, I begin to feel a bit comatose. That winter in Berkeley, I'd get up, walk to work, come home, and go straight to bed. I'm trying to resist the temptation to do the same thing now, but it's hard.

All this rain is knocking the remnants of autumn's leaves off all the trees. Pretty soon, beauties like the one pictured above (a pignut hickory, maybe?) will be bare skeletons, reaching bony arms to the sky.

And if we needed any certain signs that winter is upon us, they have come over the past three nights—the high chirruping cries of sandhill cranes, arriving (late, I think) for the winter.

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