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It's about time for an Aquarius Season update – as I publish this, the Sun will be in the final degree of Aquarius. In the upper Midwest there's no real pattern for a typical year. This year couldn't be more different than the last one. I moved to the Wisconsin side of the St. Croix Valley right before the onset of winter in 2021, and it was one of the more unrelentingly cold winters that I've ever experienced. But this year is much different. Just like always in the Upper Midwest, it has had a few stretches of bitter cold, but in January and now again in February there have been extended thaws. At the rate we are going, this could be one of those winters that ends early. On the other hand, the first half of winter dropped as much snow as typically falls in an entire winter. But the pattern for the second half of winter has been air coming from the Pacific and it has been milder and drier. On the other hand, it would be a mistake to assume that this means a very mild spring. I have seen a mild winter lead into a chilly springtime. Our climate is just too changeable to make any solid generalizations. Many parts of the USA have climates that are relatively predictable but ours is about as changeable as it comes.
The last time I wrote, it seemed as if I might update my journal more regularly. So far that hasn't happened, because the frenetic activity which started last year has not really abated. As a matter of fact, my personal life has gotten busier than I can remember in a long time. It was quite a bit more laid back last year, partly because at the very beginning of the year we still had not yet emerged from the conditions of the pandemic when things were still either shut down or at a much lower level of activity than before the pandemic. 2022 will stand in hindsight as the year when things opened back up. It was about time after 2 years of carceral conditions. There was a frenzy of activities such as I had not seen since the "before times" (if you want to use the mainstream media's dystopian phrase). The summertime was the peak of that activity, and at times I thought it was as busy as I remember it being in 2019 before the pandemic happened. What that has meant in practice is that all of a sudden social events and the like are once again back in style now that everyone is no longer deathly afraid of leaving their homes. And I too have gotten sucked into the vortex of activity.
With the mild weather, the wildlife visiting has been quite different than the previous year. All of the regulars around here continue to return to the feeder. One notable change is that we have attracted a large flock of doves, who are now regular visitors at dawn, dusk or whatever time of day they want to come in. We have large numbers of deer owing to the wooded hills of the area, so it's very common for me to see them moving in herds at various hours of the day. One night I nearly collided with one whilst driving home. This happens routinely on the local highways. It is not uncommon to see a deer having been clobbered by a large truck by the roadside. This affords an opportunity to see the local bald eagles, as they can't resist moving in for a free meal, along with the crows and all the other regulars of this area. We have had no boreal species of birds coming in this year like the redpolls or pine siskins. It has been too warm. I also have not heard coyotes howling in the hills. They have all left these parts it seems. The turkeys also have come and gone. But in the case of both of these I have just mentioned, they are migratory and so their absence needn't imply they are dead.
Unfortunately the same could not be said for a rabbit who was a regular visitor in the hours around nightfall and also around pre-dawn. This unfortunate visitor was killed by a fox one morning as I watched in dismay. The woods are still filled with predators although they mostly have made themselves scarce. But overall the nature around here is positively overflowing with vitality. Thanks I think in part to our efforts, we have established a large population of locals who stay year-round and breed, including the irrepressible even in winter breeds such as the white breasted nuthatch, the chickadee and the tufted titmouse. There are also breeding cardinals albeit in lower numbers. Depending on the duration of our winter, the next few months promise to be some of the most exciting for backyard natural historians. That's because a profusion of birds will come up from the tropics in waves as the weather improves. For now however we appear to be stuck in a holding pattern with only the year-round populations to keep us company. Fortunately the natives that stay around for all seasons are some of the most enjoyable species there are.
Speaking of holding patterns, American life seems rather stalemated. That's why my interest in public affairs has somewhat diminished with time. Thanks to too many years of questionable governance, America has come to a kind of reprise of the 1970s and '80s: economic stagnation and high inflation are the result. And right now, in order that the persistent problems should be fixed, some intellectual grasp or apprehension of the problems that got us here would be called for. Yet I do not see much of the kind. And in the absence of decisive action to fix the problems, which our rulers can't provide, the US markets are still behaving very irrationally, as they can do for far longer than you can stay solvent, inflation remains troubling, and there is little fundamental willingness to change the conditions that led us to this place. That in turn has diminished the interest I pay to political and economic matters. I tend to look on in incomprehension at how people spend years of their lives as political outrage junkies without accomplishing a damned thing. The whole thing has taken on the character of a bad soap opera, whether or not the action is all scripted or fictitious, a question whose answer I will leave up to the judgment of the reader.
One thing that did change once I became more aware of the esoteric side of life thanks to communities like John Michael Greer's is that I believe the gods or fate or whatever you want to call it sends you messages via the situations you face in this life. If the society of the spectacle no longer holds any interest, then perhaps that is a message from on high that you need to spend your time doing other things. For me 2023 is going to be a year of action. Apart from toil, I have plenty of practical skills that need improvement, I have books to finish (both the reading and the writing of them), and it also looks like a year of a lot more socializing too, and finally I would like to return to a more rigorous course of esoteric training which I began last year but which got derailed by things constantly coming up since late last summer. But somehow, all that considered, I will still find time to pen these epistles, that one small voice in the wilderness of the 21st century might be preserved for posterity. Subject to the whims of fate I suppose.
The last time I wrote, it seemed as if I might update my journal more regularly. So far that hasn't happened, because the frenetic activity which started last year has not really abated. As a matter of fact, my personal life has gotten busier than I can remember in a long time. It was quite a bit more laid back last year, partly because at the very beginning of the year we still had not yet emerged from the conditions of the pandemic when things were still either shut down or at a much lower level of activity than before the pandemic. 2022 will stand in hindsight as the year when things opened back up. It was about time after 2 years of carceral conditions. There was a frenzy of activities such as I had not seen since the "before times" (if you want to use the mainstream media's dystopian phrase). The summertime was the peak of that activity, and at times I thought it was as busy as I remember it being in 2019 before the pandemic happened. What that has meant in practice is that all of a sudden social events and the like are once again back in style now that everyone is no longer deathly afraid of leaving their homes. And I too have gotten sucked into the vortex of activity.
With the mild weather, the wildlife visiting has been quite different than the previous year. All of the regulars around here continue to return to the feeder. One notable change is that we have attracted a large flock of doves, who are now regular visitors at dawn, dusk or whatever time of day they want to come in. We have large numbers of deer owing to the wooded hills of the area, so it's very common for me to see them moving in herds at various hours of the day. One night I nearly collided with one whilst driving home. This happens routinely on the local highways. It is not uncommon to see a deer having been clobbered by a large truck by the roadside. This affords an opportunity to see the local bald eagles, as they can't resist moving in for a free meal, along with the crows and all the other regulars of this area. We have had no boreal species of birds coming in this year like the redpolls or pine siskins. It has been too warm. I also have not heard coyotes howling in the hills. They have all left these parts it seems. The turkeys also have come and gone. But in the case of both of these I have just mentioned, they are migratory and so their absence needn't imply they are dead.
Unfortunately the same could not be said for a rabbit who was a regular visitor in the hours around nightfall and also around pre-dawn. This unfortunate visitor was killed by a fox one morning as I watched in dismay. The woods are still filled with predators although they mostly have made themselves scarce. But overall the nature around here is positively overflowing with vitality. Thanks I think in part to our efforts, we have established a large population of locals who stay year-round and breed, including the irrepressible even in winter breeds such as the white breasted nuthatch, the chickadee and the tufted titmouse. There are also breeding cardinals albeit in lower numbers. Depending on the duration of our winter, the next few months promise to be some of the most exciting for backyard natural historians. That's because a profusion of birds will come up from the tropics in waves as the weather improves. For now however we appear to be stuck in a holding pattern with only the year-round populations to keep us company. Fortunately the natives that stay around for all seasons are some of the most enjoyable species there are.
Speaking of holding patterns, American life seems rather stalemated. That's why my interest in public affairs has somewhat diminished with time. Thanks to too many years of questionable governance, America has come to a kind of reprise of the 1970s and '80s: economic stagnation and high inflation are the result. And right now, in order that the persistent problems should be fixed, some intellectual grasp or apprehension of the problems that got us here would be called for. Yet I do not see much of the kind. And in the absence of decisive action to fix the problems, which our rulers can't provide, the US markets are still behaving very irrationally, as they can do for far longer than you can stay solvent, inflation remains troubling, and there is little fundamental willingness to change the conditions that led us to this place. That in turn has diminished the interest I pay to political and economic matters. I tend to look on in incomprehension at how people spend years of their lives as political outrage junkies without accomplishing a damned thing. The whole thing has taken on the character of a bad soap opera, whether or not the action is all scripted or fictitious, a question whose answer I will leave up to the judgment of the reader.
One thing that did change once I became more aware of the esoteric side of life thanks to communities like John Michael Greer's is that I believe the gods or fate or whatever you want to call it sends you messages via the situations you face in this life. If the society of the spectacle no longer holds any interest, then perhaps that is a message from on high that you need to spend your time doing other things. For me 2023 is going to be a year of action. Apart from toil, I have plenty of practical skills that need improvement, I have books to finish (both the reading and the writing of them), and it also looks like a year of a lot more socializing too, and finally I would like to return to a more rigorous course of esoteric training which I began last year but which got derailed by things constantly coming up since late last summer. But somehow, all that considered, I will still find time to pen these epistles, that one small voice in the wilderness of the 21st century might be preserved for posterity. Subject to the whims of fate I suppose.
