The Gaia Girls Blog

I Took A Walk…

Yesterday was a teasing day. The sun is sailing higher and brighter and the sunbeams glowing across my floor spoke of summer days just around the corner. Then I looked at the thermometer. Regardless of what the sunbeam teased, it was still very much winter outside.

I bundled up, got my wild puppy on her leash and headed out. Leeloo and I went eastward, along the Chemung River.  Once we were over the dyke and I knew there were no other walkers or dogs, I let her off her leash. It was like I’d fired her out of a cannon!

She exploded into action, racing around with her nose on the ground!  The river has been very high within the past few weeks. As it retreated, the river has left many interesting and delectable things behind. Even I could detect a slight fishy smell in the air!

My ears also noticed something different, but I couldn’t quite tell what. I remembered that last year, I’d heard returning migrating birds about two weeks before I saw them.  I looked at the masses of waterfowl congregated along the river and though I was picking up their new and various grumbles and quackles. There were definitely ducks I didn’t recognize.

About a half-mile from the house we found an interesting sight.  Ice floes had been thrown high up and left to die their long death of melting away.  The chunks of ice were still quite big, about the size of a card table. I jumped from one t o another, noticing how they all looked different. They had different mud caked on them, and were melting in different ways.

I considered them and smiled when I realized that this is one way Gaia tells us stories.  That ice, had once been rain. I thought about where it had rained, and when. Perhaps as close as the neighboring hill. Or, perhaps the rain had falling much further to the West, rolled down a valley, dropped into the Cohocton River and frozen there for a month. Perhaps the first thaw drew that ice into the Chemung where it froze up yet again. The last stretch of warm days had swollen our river and now, here was a this hunk of ice smiling up at me, trying to tell me where it had been and where it would go after melting into the river bed. Someone’s well. This ice could be someone’s next cool drink of water.

When I was home, standing at my kitchen sink enjoying my own cool drink, I saw what my ears had known…a redwing blackbird! My heart jumped up.  I have felt since early February that we would have an early spring, and here hoping around under the birdfeeder, was my confirmation.

What have you seen this week? How is Gaia telling you that spring is on the way?

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