The Season of Falinter?
A Year of Noticing - Day 60
Instead of the crunch of crispy, dried, fallen leaves beneath our feet this morning, we noticed that the frozen leaf piles in the park provided another textured experience. A bit of a crunch, and also you sink a little - but not as far as when they are dried!
As we crunched along, over the leaves I wondered if I had ever walked over a pile of frozen leaves… not that I noticed or can remember (though I feel like it is probable that I have at some point, right?)
We often get an unexpected and early blast of winter snow, and then the snow cover often stays until mid-late March… and so I’ve noticed this year that it really feels like we are experiencing an extended fall season, as well as aspects of autumn that we don’t get to experience every year.
At the same time I’ve noticed that this is really a bit of an “in between” season - we are not in the depths of winter, and yet it is cold enough for winter jackets and so doesn’t feel totally like fall anymore either… maybe it’s a blend of fall and winter. What could I call that? Finter? Falinter? Wintall? Hmmm…
With the warmer than seasonal temperatures I noticed multiple, large flocks of Canada geese flying south today. Actually, I heard them long before I saw them, and then looked around to see if I could find their beautiful formation!
Today though, I noticed that some groups of geese seemed more organized than others, and one flock looked maybe a little panicked as it was getting colder and they were rushing so quickly that they didn’t even have their typical “V” formation! Maybe there were other reasons that they didn’t have their classic formation, but it did look a bit more chaotic than the other four or five flocks I saw flying overhead this morning! In fact, if I hadn’t heard their honking I wouldn’t have guessed it was a formation of geese - they really seemed scattered all over the place!
Perhaps those geese in the more disorganized flock, needed a brief pause to re-group, re-set and re-start… or maybe that’s what their were in the midst of doing while flying until they found their rhythm again, and their direction.
Shortly after the geese flew over, I looked up to see an incredible bald eagle soaring overhead. In fact, it seemed to pause to say hello as it flew in a circle just in front of us before continuing south along the river… maybe the bald eagle too was realizing that it was time to journey south. It was a magical morning of sights and sounds, in this in-between time of falinter:)
What are you noticing about this in-between season, the frost, the friction, the fascination? Maybe a little of it all…