{"id":9,"date":"2007-11-09T09:50:54","date_gmt":"2007-11-09T15:50:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/?p=9"},"modified":"2007-11-09T09:54:18","modified_gmt":"2007-11-09T15:54:18","slug":"changing-the-scenery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/?p=9","title":{"rendered":"Changing the Scenery"},"content":{"rendered":"

33\u00a0 82%\u00a0 38%\u00a0 0mph windroseE\u00a0 dewpoint28\u00a0 bar steady\u00a0 Ordinary Time\u00a0<\/font>New Moon<\/font><\/p>\n

First snow.\u00a0 After a scatter of flakes, a beady snow dropped onto our deck, bouncing before it came to a rest.\u00a0 Didn’t last long, but it was enough.\u00a0 This first snow has a magical quality, a true signal that the theatre of the seasons has changed scenes and scenery.\u00a0\u00a0Clouds give the day an intimate quality, the sky closer to the earth.\u00a0 The brown of dead lives and withered perennials has small shadows of white.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This is the time the evergreens begin to stand out.\u00a0 The pachysandra on the third tier under the Colorado Spruce is a nest of shiny green leaves; the cedar trees in our woods stand tall, their flat needles green against the leafless oaks, big-tooth aspens, ash and black locust.<\/p>\n

In my northern heart this time, called by the Celts Samain, through to Imbolc, the time when lambs came into the belly in old Ireland, around February 1st, defines me and those who live here.\u00a0 This is our time as summer is the time of Southern California and Arizona, Texas and New Mexico.\u00a0\u00a0 Part of it is because of what we endure, for them the heat and aridity, for us, the cold and the snow, but it is more, much more, than that.\u00a0 It is the difference between cranking up the snowblower and pushing the button on a power boat, between walking through knee deep snow, exhilirated, and walking through 107 heat refreshed by the mists from those outdoor cooling devices.\u00a0 To my northern heart exhiliration trumps wilting in the heat; but I know that’s my bias, a bias not shared by the hundreds, thousands of Minnesotans who become snowbirds each winter, migrating to warmer climes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

33\u00a0 82%\u00a0 38%\u00a0 0mph windroseE\u00a0 dewpoint28\u00a0 bar steady\u00a0 Ordinary Time\u00a0New Moon First snow.\u00a0 After a scatter of flakes, a beady snow dropped onto our deck, bouncing before it came to a rest.\u00a0 Didn’t last long, but it was enough.\u00a0 This first snow has a magical quality, a true signal that the theatre of the seasons … Continue reading Changing the Scenery<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weather-climate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}