Horton Park

Horton Park

After a brief foray across a gash in the clouds, the moon slips out of sight. As though it unbuttoned the cloak of night, the sky begins to brighten.

Hamline Ave.

Today's moment delivered as haiku.

Horton Park

Horton Park

Washington Ave. Bridge, UMN Minneapolis campus

This morning I bundled up and shoveled several inches of snow off our driveway. Last Monday we didn't even wear jackets for an after school trip to the playground. In the intervening week, we've had temperatures in the single digits and wind chills well below zero. This pattern of wild swings in the weather is no longer unusual. The cupboard near our back door that serves as a tiny coat closet is stuffed to overflowing with three or four jackets per person because we seem to need a different set of layers every day.

This weather whiplash is the more obvious face of climate change. It is hard to notice the gradual, longer term changes of global warming. Based on your recollection, could you say whether winter where you live was warmer or cooler than last year, on average? I doubt it, because our brains just don't work in averages like that.

From my bedroom window

"Worried Man notes the hour - golden russet slanting light, the hour when the angle of the sun heading toward the ocean illuminates everything seemingly from inside, so that plants glow greenly with their bright green souls naked to the naked joyous eye."   (page 35)

"Rained gently last night, just enough to wash the town clean, and then today a clean crisp fat spring day, the air redolent, the kind of green minty succulent air you'd bottle if you could and snort greedily on bleak wet January evenings when the streetlights hzzzzt on at four in the afternoon and all existence seems hopeless and sad."   (page 38)

Mink River
a novel by Brian Doyle

Mink River is set in a small town on the Oregon coast. Doyle's writing is compelling, seeming to physically drag the eye across the page. His rendition of Oregon's rich, damp, pervasive greenness makes me nostalgic for the years I spent working on my PhD at Oregon State University.

While looking for links for this post, I learned Brian Doyle underwent surgery for a brain tumor in November 2016. You can learn more and support his family on their gofundme page.

Blustery wind sends last year's leaves tumbling down the street, bouncing, whirling, dancing, giddy like children released from the last day of school.

Minnehaha Ave.