An excerpt from my old nature photographers newsletter "The Dancing Trail" that I published by subscription for about 10 years back in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
The Mercurial Heart
We did get a taste of winter, didn’t we! I’ll bet that all those solid black Wooly Bears I saw last year are now red with embarrassment! It was particularly touch-and-go with the electricity on the fourth weekend of the year, especially of concern to your faithful writer here, since we had not been able to get our LP truck up our driveway for three weeks- and were almost out of gas! This after last winter when we had to exist only on kerosene stoves and my four-wheel truck for two full days.
Saturday, the 29th was a day of quarter-degrees. A quarter-degree up, and a quarter-degree down; a whole half-degree was a cause for concern! The day dawned darkly at thirty-one, but soon thereafter was way down to thirty! A closer look showed it not all that bad, it was actually thirty and PROBABLY a quarter. And there was more good news ten minutes, later when it climbed up to thirty and at least a HALF!
Still later I’d pulled it back up to thirty one, and both the day and I looked a whole lot brighter. Then I glanced at the birds through the dining room window and saw that RAIN had started to fall! I raced quickly back to the temperature gauge to see where it was and saw that it was now up to thirty TWO! Oh Joy, joy! With a happy heart I went to the kitchen to brew another pot of coffee; no need now to hurry, with electricity safe, the lines won’t come down, not now - we’re safe!
A quarter-hour later, I casually checked to see how warm it had beome, and I froze as I saw it was now thirty one! Omph! I wished it would climb, and saw in my mind the temperature gauge at forty degrees! But when I looked again my heart fell to thirty, where the temperature column then rested. Five minutes later it was thirty and a quarter; five after that, it was back down to thirty, and then climbed up to thirty plus a whole complete half - whew! At thirty two my heart climbed to fifty, but when it dropped to 28, my heart dropped to twenty - and then all seemed lost as the mercury fell - incredibly - to twenty-seven and three-quarters degrees! Then twenty-seven and only a half, and twenty-seven and just one-quarter, then on down to twenty-SIX! - And now the rain had turned to ice!
In my mind I could hear the wild, lonely howl of long-hungry wolves and wondered if even our bones would survive. I found myself wishing I had some pottery to put out to help future archeologists figure it all out. Then - unexpectedly, the sun came out and the sky even became blue in places! And the day changed completely.
Now, the birdies are singing sweet songs of enchantment in the warm blue skies in my heart, and the flowers are fragrant with blossoms of springtime in that pleasant land where I spend most of my time.
So, I guess what’s going on inside is really more important than all that other stuff out there!
© John Womack, 2002. All rights reserved
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