Yesterday I took the little ones outside for a nature walk. We have several routes — one is the “Pine Cone Place” walk, and one is the “Granite Ridge” walk. I am trying to put Nature on the front burner as we move towards spring. But spring comes later to our High Sierra mountain environment than it does most everywhere else, and this spring’s unusual cold-weather events have pushed back the spring growth even further.
We found ourselves walking through a shower of crystals. The sun was out but a cloud was dropping tiny, swirling bits of frozen precipitation on us. It was like a confetti shower or like being inside one of those snow scenes that you shake and put down. My trusty but basic digital camera doesn’t seem to DO snowflakes but here is a picture of what the sky looked like:
and here is a picture of our road the other day, on our last nature walk, when we were getting a mysterious fog:
I think I will have to redefine “signs of spring” as something that shows up in the air around here well before it shows up in the flora or fauna. We don’t yet have our ants or lizards or our mountain lupin. Since the bulk of our trees around here are evergreens, we don’t see major large-growth differences during the season’s changes.
We did see this the other day:
So it’s coming, but slowly.
