Winter’s Rhythm

“Summertime, and the livin’ is easy…”, that’s what George Gershwin said. Per the Natural Law Principle of Polarity, he might have added another line like: Wintertime, and the livin’ ain’t easy; although it may be true, it doesn’t ring with the same poetry. Hot and cold, easy versus hard, they’re simply polarities of temperature and effort. Or, consider the swing between the summer and winter seasons, or solstices, as an expression of the Natural Law Principle of Rhythm. At The Springs we adjust to Winter’s Rhythm by carefully relaxing, lowering expectations, and dressing warmly; then we carry on.

We had a window of opportunity last Saturday, January 4th, before the deep freeze arrived, to slash, pile and burn in the Buckthorn Alley. SuperFriends♥ Ben Johnson, his wife Karen and Pati joined me, softening the hardness of winter with their warm energy.

I visited the Hotel Spring when I arrived to get some fresh, clean, drinking water.

This was the scene in the Buckthorn Alley before we started.

We lit the brush pile in the foreground of the first picture above and had a nice fire to keep warm by. Karen and Pati split their time between piling brush and feeding brush into the fire. Ben was obviously more comfortable with the chainsaw and, I dare say, I think he had a lot more fun. He and Karen visited this spot on New Year’s day and they bushwhacked through the opening in the buckthorn that Zach and I cut and passed through three different cranberry bogs before emerging on the cut-off trail. It is encouraging to know that the area between the north section of the trail and the cut-off trail is not a solid mass of buckthorn. I’ll have to check this out myself!

Snow fell, heavily at times, while we worked and John and Sue Hrobar stopped by to say hello. Here is how it looked when we quit.

Afterwards, Pati and I had time to enjoy a walk and the views through the large flakes of steadily falling snow on the cut-off trail were enchanting. That’s John and Sue on the gaging station bridge below.