Turnings Great and Small

From a distance, these end-of-February woodlands look much the same as they did at end of December and January, but standing here now, one can hear and see the difference: the color and texture of the snow, its aroma and its sparkle, the length and depth of tree shadows across the landscape, the warmth of the slowly strengthening sun above as it shines down through the bare trees. The noticing of such things is (perhaps) a function of fine tuning one's lens and sensibilities to minute evolutionary changes in the natural order and the turning year, be those changes minute, quotidian or seasonal.

Somewhere further along the trail, the resident Great Horned Owls are nesting now - I have already heard them calling to each other, and this morning I heard a Saw-whet Owl somewhere just over the hill. Although we still have a fair bit of winter to get through here, it appears that springtime and the maple sugar season are on their way.