Welcome to this week’s Reno News & Review.
I woke up this morning to a blanket of snow outside—OK, a sheet—with gorgeous, thin blue skies and the promise of a chillier day. As I stood on the deck with my coffee, it occurred to me that there was something about the snow out there that just felt “right.” The season’s lack of snow had somehow made me feel off-kilter, and this dusting put things to right.
I’m not a habitual skier, but I’ve had to sympathize with those who’ve been suffering through this dry winter.
Still, I’ve loved never being inconvenienced by the snow or feeling a lack of blazing sunshine.
As I stood there on the deck, I pondered that feeling of “rightness.” I think people must forget our animal natures. While we haven’t had the weather that drives me indoors for the season, I have been spending way more time inside, staring into the blue eye of my monitor. It struck me that it’s the animal pattern of my existence that’s motivated (or unmotivated) my behavior. In other words, like the bears in their dens, I’ve stayed inside despite the lack of necessity for doing so.
I’m going to be totally selfish and say I hope we get a little bit more of this unseasonably warm weather before the massively wet and cold storms sock in the valley because, as I’ve said many times to neighbors walking by in their windbreakers, “Sure, it’s great now, but we’re going to be crying come August.”
And now, apropos of nothing except perhaps the crazy warm weather, I’m listening to a honeybee that’s buzzing around in the fluorescent light fixture above my desk—a honeybee, in the middle of January. I guess I’m not the only being experiencing detoured circadian rhythms. We have a beehive in the ceiling of our building, so I spend summers releasing bees out the back door.
I guess this one’s not going to see the spring.
You and I, though, have only 54 days until my unofficial first day of spring—daylight saving—begins.