The Season of "Giving"

Photo copyrighted by Jennifer E. Miller 2017

The Season of "Giving"

By,

Jennifer E. Miller

Let's start with a poem, shall we?

It's that time of year again. 

There's a nip in the air and bronchitis flares. 

Toes go numb and reflux needs Tums.

Eagles flock along the lake and cameras break.

So....

When the hell is summer coming back? 

This season is oh so pleasantly giving me plenty. Does winter take refunds? Cause I'd sure like to toss back a handful of unnecessary items. I don't think any of them would make decent white elephant gifts.

Who likes being sick? No one. Albeit my younger self when I skipped school due to chickenpox and watched cartoons all day long. Grandma fed me noodle soup with as many Zesta crackers as I wanted. She shoved a can of 7Up with a straw bobbing in the seltzer bubbles, insisting I would get healthy faster if I drank it a room temperature. I didn't believe her but wasn't going to turn down pop. Fast forward a few decades and sickness seems to hang around longer than it used to. Why do coughs hang around for morbidly long periods of time? I don't have time for this. Or reflux or foot problems.

There is a good thing about winter. Bald eagles congregate at Lake Coeur d'Alene to feast on the kokanee. It's fun to watch them. Driving over, Tom and I spotted eight perched in a tree. They leap from their branch and glide over the water's surface, scooping up a fish. The eagles also makes for a popular photography spot. After recently getting my camera repaired, I was excited to put it to use. It was working fine the weeks after the repairs. Go figure on the day I need it most, it acts up again. I tried all the troubleshooting tricks I could think of, but it was overexposing all my images. Some even came out completely white-washed. Finally, I found a work-around that gave me a handful of, at least, workable images. (The eagle at the top of this page is the one semi-kind-sorta decent eagle photo. It's a little blurry, but he is staring right at me.) I don't know what winter did to my camera, but it quit bullying it anytime now.

Frustrated with my camera, I decided a hike on the Mineral Ridge Trail nearby was in order. Tom tried to tell me not to do it for a multitude of reasons: it's too cold; my foot wasn't in bad shape; we both had coughs. The most important reason: he didn't want to. So off we went.

I only wanted to hike a small portion to the nearest viewpoint. At the trail head, a sign says to stay to the right as the sign to the left said "do not enter." Apparently, they want hikers walking in one direction. Well, the shortest distance to the viewpoint was to the left so that's where I started walking. Tom, being a rule follower, mentioned the sign to me. I snuffed, suggesting the probability someone comes at us with a shotgun were slim. Besides, I was grumpy and not interested in following any rules.

The ground was covered with patches of ice crystals that caught my attention. They looked like something out of Tinkerbell's fairyland. 

Photo by Jennifer E. Miller 2017

An interesting topographical quirk is that the top of the hills have frost, while the lower sections don't (at least, not yet). We reached an area where the trees on the outer section had said frost, but not the trees on the inner section. It was like walking through The Snow Queen's kingdom.

Photo by Jennifer E. Miller 2017

While, so far, the season isn't exactly what I planned, I tried to make the most from it. Winter is not my favorite season, after all. 

Things I like about summer: warmth, outdoors, berry harvests, and road trips. My birthday used to be included in this list, but now the years are creeping forward way to darned fast. Summer can keep that day.

Things I like about winter: when it's over.



Copyright 2017 Jennifer E. Miller