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Well, the middle of January has come & gone and we are now back into the icebox. I think it's safe at this point to say that we are making up for the fairly weak sauce winters that we had the past couple of years. This is a real winter complete with weeks of frigid weather. There was nothing comparable last year except for about a two-week stretch in February, although that one did have about 10 days below zero. Winter of 2020 was not very severe but it did make a few comebacks. I begin with this retrospective preamble for important context. On occasion, the upper Midwest experiences a milder winter, but we were not so lucky this year. It remains to be seen if it will be a year like 2018 through 2020, when mid-April blizzards occurred. The meteorologists have gotten it right for a change, and I knew this deep freeze was coming, so I made the milder run up to it the occasion for an outing, to a place I will never regret visiting.

Recently I returned to the Northwoods where I had left some things since I had moved down in November. There was an odd sense of deja vu on the way up. The day I moved down in November, it was a gray and misty day with leaden skies, bearing more than a hint of a coming winter storm. It looked nearly identical on the drive up. The major difference was the snow on the ground. The coating was not more than a few inches near the city, but farther north it was obviously much deeper. I would guess at least 10 inches or so. I recalled how quickly I left thinking that it would become a multiple day snow event and I would be trapped in the north country and unable to move. That turned out to be a false worry, and the hassles of moving occupied my time until I took this long weekend to go get the remainder of my stuff. Though the roads going north are never completely deserted, the traffic was low enough all the way along to give the distinct impression of a depopulated land.

The North country at this time of year is hauntingly beautiful. I don't find the gray skies or mist off putting at all. It lends a certain mysterious and forlorn atmosphere to the place. A snow covered forest and gray skies just fit each other in some way. Some people have described the upper Midwest in winter time as bleak, however I did not find this to be so in natural settings. Sometimes the cities do take on a bleak appearance at this time of the year. The woods and lakes of Central Minnesota take on a very different rhythm of life as the seasons turn. Summertime is the peak of activity -- it will be bustling at those times, and all of the out of town people will be there. In the fall, activity tapers off quite a bit, but still a number of seasonal people will remain and the activity level is probably half or less what it is in the summertime. Finally, in the wintertime, it is very quiet. But some seasonal traffic can be expected -- driven by ice fishermen and other winter recreation crowds. Still, traffic was at its lowest ebb and the whole milieu was by far the quietest I had seen in a long time.

The caretaker of the property had moved the seed, so I didn't end up feeding the birds. Two fat squirrels had gotten into the pole building, and they were the likely culprits in the destruction of the previous bin. It was blue plastic and it had been gnawed into since I was here last. They had obviously distributed seeds and nuts around the building because they were still finding food in there. These squirrels were both hybrids -- there's both a gray and a black squirrel population up there, and there are also intermediates. Somehow two of these had got in and caused all kinds of mayhem. Unfortunately, the pole building is so filled with junk that catching them would have been an impossible task. I decided not to try and find the rest of the seed or to feed at all. A black bear could come and rip down the feeders, just like in the fall, and deer coming by at night to wipe out all the seed would also be likely. As much as I wanted to do it, I had to pass. I said a silent apology to the nuthatches, chickadees, and woodpeckers, and God knows what else, that I would not see. I didn't miss the squirrels, who became quite obese as the fall went on.

It was rather surreal to think back to the forest in summertime when I first arrived. The ever-present call of loons and barred owls at night and in the Twilight. It seemed so very silent now by comparison. Only once did I hear the insistent call of the pileated woodpecker, who was a constant companion from August on. No doubt this was one of the same that visited our feeders. At one point, from the kitchen window, I beheld a bald eagle, full adult, sitting in the treetops, looking like a sentinel off the south, toward its old hunting ground on the lake. I had seen eagles sit in that same roost in past years, when I was only visiting. The memory took me back to about 5 years ago, when I started to see eagles both up north and in the twin cities very often. Even in my younger days, they were not a common sight, and in the works of the nature writers of a previous generation, a bald eagle sighting would be a rare surprise indeed. I never get tired of seeing them, as I have only to remember that, in the summertime when it was so dry, I did not see a single one for months. But apart from these lonely omens I have just related, the forest seemed unusually silent and uninhabited.

Uninhabited, that is, except for the winter recreation crowd. Fish houses were set up on most of the local lakes. Snowmobilers could be seen on all of the local trails at all times of day that I was out. On Saturday night I did one of my favorite drives that winds through some fantastically wild wood and lake country. The road terminates near the edge of town. There at the local bar, many cars, trucks and snowmobiles were stacked up for happy hour and the football games. All was as it should be in the world. A passing town cop glowered at me as I gawked at the local gathering. I suppose I could have stopped in and collected some local folklore, but I wasn't in the mood, and I didn't want any attention from the local constables. The purpose of this trip was to get some things done, and to have a bit of time to reflect in solitude, which is one of my favorite things to do in this overheated culture we live in. Any sociable activities in the north country will have to wait for another day, perhaps when the sun is in Aquarius or Pisces and I can find another weekend for a getaway.

It is a sunny and unseasonably warm day in January as I write this. Since yesterday a front moved in, and since then, the weather is more akin to early spring than the middle of winter. The world seemed to know it too, as the entire landscape came alive with bird song and a burst of activity not seen since the warmer months. However, this being the upper Midwest, it would be foolish to assume such a condition will last for the rest of the winter. The next major cold front is only just over the horizon, and that's one assertion I will take to the bank.

However as we go into mid-January it's a perfect time for another installment of nature observations. Since starting this project I came to realize that doing weekly updates on local wildlife and conditions will greatly aid the understanding of seasonal dynamics and variations. No 2 years are alike, and in any given year part of the entertainment of natural observation is how that year represents a season in a different and totally unique permutation of events. This is even more true for my local area than many parts of the world, for we are inhabitants of one of the most changeable climates in the world. The upper Midwest in general and Minnesota and North Dakota in particular are known for extreme variability both from one season to the next and within seasons as well.

The word changeable describes the new year of 2022 quite well. The majority of the days since the New years have been frigid, however the streak was broken in the last two days by an unseasonable warm front. Locally I observed a high of 36° F yesterday and a glance at the thermometer outside shows that it is even higher today. This is a classic January thaw, and it is a more vibrant one than they actually predicted. It is premature to assume that this will herald an early spring. Another polar front is already brewing and the end of January is expected to be colder than the norm. When the whole thing is finished, I expect that the month of January will live up to its reputation around these parts for harsh conditions. Still, it is nothing like the static chill and blizzards of Januaries past like in 2019 and 2014.

Activity at the feeders picked up during the frigid days. Dozens of finches came in during that time. This also included the first sightings of redpolls for the year. During very cold fronts I have sometimes expected to see pine siskins or perhaps even a visiting northern shrike from more northerly climes. So far we have not had any of those visitors yet. On a brief trip before the new year I did see what appeared to be a flock of snow buntings northwest of the twin cities. Generally these far northern visitors are signs of a more severe winter, but so far there have only been intermittent visitors. It is a far cry from some other years when we had pine siskins staying for the entire winter owing to prolonged boreal conditions. For the most part, the wildlife has been the same as before-- The only major change is a lone male turkey has come to the feeder the past few days, while the previous visitors were a large congregation of females.

Yesterday it was nice outside, particularly after a long spell of extreme cold, and since I had an errand to run anyway, I went over to a nearby town to a city park that overlooks the river. The river appears to be largely frozen north of town, but south of the town there were large sections that were still open. In the open patches, a great number of swans were swimming around. They were occasionally sparring as well, and perhaps this aggression is a hint of the coming breeding season. Also, sitting out on the thin ice in between bouts of hunting, were at least half a dozen eagles. The afternoon air filled with the musical calls of the swans and of the eagles in flight. They were joined by more humble company, the many chickadees, nuthatches, and they always boisterous red-bellied woodpeckers, enjoying a very hospitable afternoon in the oak groves at the top of the bluff. As idyllic as this picture was, it was only a promise of the springtime to come, as we are only just entering the middle of winter in meteorological terms.

Other sightings of note included three eagles in the neighborhood adjacent to mine, and a red fox on a local trail situated in a restored prairie nearby. The former are always identifiable by their distinctive calls. We were alerted to the presence of the latter however by an unfamiliar series of barks and whines. For a number of minutes we were completely ignorant of the source, and confused as to who could be making such calls. It was only after we rounded the corner and saw the red fox out in the open that we realized. But as soon as it knew it had been observed, the wily creature disappeared into the high grass and was not seen again. It was probably stalking prey perhaps along with its family, as there are many rodents to hunt in tunnels through the snow out in the grasslands just now. Restored prairies are oftentimes home to Marsh Hawks and short eared owls but so far I've not seen any there.

The last two winters have been described as Dark Winters in political circles. But what they seem to have been, at least from the perspective of the natural world, is fairly ordinary. As I grow older, the incessant cold of the winters at this latitude sometimes seems monotonous. But even the bitter season is part of the pageant. There is always something worth seeing at this time of year. Yesterday, the bright sunshine from a sun still low in the sky, or the waxing gibbous moon rising in a bluebird sky were worth the price of admission. It has been clouding up at dusk pretty reliably, and the sun downs have been spectacular. Winter sunsets in the North country are wondrous to behold, like a fire blazing itself down into embers. As long as I am here to witness these things, I will continue to report on them. Half a winter remains, the rest before the rebirth of spring. We'll see what the remainder of the season brings.

Though I moved to my new location almost 2 months ago, I only began to feel this new place as my home in the run up to the new year. This move to a completely unfamiliar place proved to be more of an adjustment than I thought. Every other place that I'd dwelled in for a long duration was familiar in some way - the western suburbs were where I had spent much of my life, and living up north was familiar enough because I had been visiting that area since I was a kid. This area however, though at the same latitude as my home in the western suburbs, is totally unfamiliar. Settling into this area has meant getting accustomed to a new biome and landscape, a new routine, and so forth. What follows is the first nature journal of the new year, in a place I am coming to feel as my home for the first time.

The unglaciated landscape with its hills and valleys is not unlike the River valleys in the Southwest of Minnesota, but in character very unlike the glaciated mixed forests of the western suburbs. As such, there are subtle differences in both the plant and animal kingdoms here. Some have already been mentioned here, but I will add more presently. First of all, we have the screech owl. It is heard in the hills to the north every night. Many birds of prey live in the area besides. There is a great horned owl living in the neighbor's yard, a barred owl near the entrance of the neighborhood, numerous eagles living in the hills and valleys of the surrounding area, and a red-tailed hawk living on top of the hills to the north. Anytime you see this many predators it means that the hunting opportunities are quite fertile, and that by and large the ecosystem is healthy and flourishing.

A thought came to me the other day, as I watched deer come down to the feeder as they often do at dusk. Right now, we have a number of does along with a formerly 8-point buck coming regularly. I say formerly because one of his antlers has gone missing in the last few days so now he has only four points on the right side of his head. These deer are very skittish and reluctant to descend the hill very far. Wisconsin is full of hunters and they have been shot at many times this year. But somehow these proud specimens have survived. The thought I had was that these deer are very different from the ones that I remember from the 1990s. This calls for a trip down memory lane to clarify what I mean for readers who may be unfamiliar.

In the 1990s, when I was still quite young, there were deer in enormous numbers in the western suburbs. As a matter of fact, one time when I was driving with my father at night we had an unfortunate collision with one that could easily have been fatal for us, had things gone differently. It was not uncommon on the long winter nights to see hundreds of deer outside in the parks not far from where I lived. I always got the impression of a gigantic deer council meeting in the frozen marshes and snowy groves out there. This was in a time of expanding suburbia, and eventually there was a loud clamor to get rid of all the deer. So eventually they were culled in a multi-city initiative, and their numbers never even approached the prodigious quantity of the 1990s ever again.

From that point onward in fact I never recall having seen those numbers of deer anywhere in my region. The deer that did show up in the 2000s and beyond were much cagier and often came at night. Sometimes you could see bucks of impressive size, real Kings of the woods, but all in all it was a rare occurrence. They continue to be hunted in calling programs, despite there being no real need for it any longer, and also the western suburbs had by this time a viable breeding population of coyotes, who also hunted the deer. I should note for a moment that coyotes were very rare in my area though not unheard of when I was young. They only became a common sight in the later 2000s, at the same time that large flocks of turkeys were seen as well. As a child, the only turkeys I would ever see were in far southwestern Minnesota, where we would sometimes go camping. These anecdotes will make it clear that major changes have occurred in the cycles of wildlife population just in my lifetime.

My theory is that the deer of today have been subjected to very strong selective pressure in the last few decades. Hunting and culling pressures have led to a populace that is more careful and elusive. I often hear hunters complain that deer are harder to catch nowadays, and the rifle hunting season is rather short, meaning that many go away disappointed. Meanwhile our neighbors up north were successful at catching one deer during the bow-hunting season. Either in the western suburbs or here on the fringes of one of the hunting capitals of the United States, the deer are adapting to what they have come to understand is a dangerous world for them, that is, the expanding ring of civilization. Though given all that is going on in the world today, it is debatable just how long that expansion will continue. Furthermore, the deer are just one of the tales of adaptation that I've seen during years of watching the world go by. That is why I also mentioned the turkeys and coyotes, though these are two triumphant success stories that serve as a counterpoint.

When observing the natural world, it is important to remember that the original phrase for what we're doing here was "natural history.". So you can expect digressions like the ones above in my writings. I like to take an historical and retrospective look at all this stuff, as without the accrued knowledge that comes with repeated observation, experience and reflection, solid learning is hard to come by. To my knowledge, this is the first time that I have set down any of these recollections in a public form. I only pass on information that is true to the best of my knowledge. If any of it does not match your experience, do not hesitate to share your opinions. Correspondence is encouraged. And I expect to continue these nature journals for as long as I am able. I see it as part of my life's work.

The civil calendar year of 2021 AD is nearly at an end so what I'm going to do in this post is to discuss the weather weirding that took place in the last year. There have been enough changes in the natural environment over the last few years that they haven't gone unnoticed. One of the themes of this writing project is reflections on local conditions. So I can't let a year go by without chronicling some of the natural world's trends I observed over its course. This year, if I had to describe it with keywords, the weather was nothing short of theatrical or cinematic.

I have already written that this is the continuation of an abandoned writing project that was started in 2020. That series of reflections ended at or around the very beginning of the year 2021. That would only have been about 1/3 of the way through meteorological winter, which in this part of the world lasts from the beginning of December to the end of February. So in other words, it precedes the astronomical ordering of the seasons by about 3 weeks. This goes for every season. But just looking from the vantage point of early January there was no indication of the strange year that would follow. Even then, there were things out of the ordinary however.

January had extensive ice fog events, of both greater geographical extent and also longer duration than at any time in my life. On New Year's Day, the ice fog was so dense that it carried the sound of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railway 5 miles away through the night air as if it were next door. I lost count of the number of days when the forest took on a crystalline aspect. However, apart from this January was not extraordinarily cold. It was actually mild by the standards of January in Minnesota, with very little in the way of deep cold. That did not arrive until early February, and it didn't stay very long although there was a prolonged spell of below zero weather. It turned out to be the only one throughout the entire winter. In all, the winter was mild and didn't compare at all with the sustained iciness of early 2014 or 2019.

The spring was something else again, in late February it became quite mild again, and it was already clear at this point, around the time that the sun enters Pisces, that there would be an early spring. But an early spring in the upper Midwest is never as clear-cut as all that. In a continental climate, it can pretty much be guaranteed that there will be ups and downs. And that's what happened. Still, March was not exceptionally snowy. Eventually, the snow melted off and everything was a drab yellow-brown. At times it was as dusty and windy as the high plains, for dry conditions had prevailed the previous year and not abated totally. April featured a prolonged warming spell, albeit with a few back steps. I should mention that at least half of that month I spent outside of the state of Minnesota, farther down to the south, so I did see days in the 80s. Later April and parts of May also saw returns to cold weather, but they were never very prolonged. I've often said it is rare to see a true spring in the upper Midwest, but this was one of them, or as close to it as we get.

The summer was something else again. When it began it was among the most idyllic summers I could ever recall. After a short cold snap at the end of May, Summer began very bright and cheerful. However June ended up being unusually hot and dry, and all of a sudden the phlegmatic character that had characterized the spring and carried over most joyfully into the beginning of summer changed abruptly into a vision of dystopia and apocalypse. The drought would persist all summer. Lakes, streams, marshes and rivers dried up, the atmosphere became smoggy and uncomfortable, and it was so dreadfully hot outside that people stayed in whenever possible. This past July was the most memorable July of my life I think. Steady blazes in Canada brought in choking clouds of smoke for weeks on end. All of a sudden my metropolitan area took on the character of Beijing, encased in a bubble of gray, the sunlight always inclining to red and pink even at high noon. It certainly resembled the far future dystopias that once only featured in my mind's eye.

Respite from this drastic condition only came later in the month of August. Slowly the periods of heat and of forest fires farther north came to an end. But they were not quick in leaving. The first signs that some new pattern was underway came late in August, when the drought, which had continued unabated through June July and much of August, finally came to an end in a rainstorm, and I once again saw bald eagles, who had been absent for the entire summer with low water conditions. Undoubtedly they had moved their interminable hunts farther to the south where there was still open water. Perhaps it is superstitious of me, but the eagle is the bird of Zeus and its sighting after an absence is usually a sign of good luck. Whatever the case, a rainy pattern continued intermittently for the rest of the fall. I should also mention because it seems significant the spotting of several rainbows during the late summer and autumn storms. Nature sends her own messages.

A different kind of inclement weather took over as soon as I moved down from up north. November was exceptionally windy. Temperatures by themselves would not have been out of the ordinary, but combined with the scouring wind, it was a highly unpleasant November. That excessively windy pattern has continued off and on since then. But be that as it may, we did not receive lasting snow cover until December which is not exactly a harbinger of a grim winter. The trouble is that the pattern can shift on a dime here. Lately with the onset of winter, my prognostications have been in error. The effect has been a seesaw -- snow, then melting. Christmas eve was in the 40s, gray and humid like Oregon, and Christmas Day was just average by the standards of December. Only now, as the new year approaches, do we find ourselves on the cusp of a deep freeze.

So I have come full circle. We are back once more to the beginning of a new year where this narrative began. I live in one of the most changeable climates in the world. As such, no two years are alike. Heat and cold can interchange quickly and unpredictably. And not many people take the time these days to write down their impressions of what goes on around them. This seemed like the perfect context to make note of a year that seemed exceptional to me. The bizarre weather patterns of this year seem to match the description that some meteorologists have given to it - "weather weirding", and I felt I would be remiss if I let another year go by without putting down my own thoughts on the matter in writing.

[Editor's note: This was meant to be posted yesterday but being out all day, I did not get to it.]

It is now the night before the winter solstice. After that, the sun begins its symbolic rebirth and its northward march, and the days will grow older accordingly. Another cycle of the seasons will follow the steady ascension of the sun. But spring is still a long ways off. The wintertide is a period symbolic of endings and of new beginnings both. As such this is a very fitting time for a reflection. The phenomena of the natural world always seem to be an outward reflection of the soul of a particular moment in time. One of the realizations I had recently was that natural history used to be a common hobby of the common people of the United States. This is by and large fallen by the wayside. In particular, the writing down of the facts is not much done anymore, Even though it was a popular genre only a few decades ago. As I am right on the cusp of a new cycle of life myself, it is only fitting that I do my part to bring this cataloging of the pageant of seasons and life in the natural world back to public consciousness.

Last week, I discussed my recent peregrinations as an introduction to this new project. They brought me finally to the east bank of the St Croix River. I've already begun the process of mapping the space around me, and building a mental model of my new surroundings. My homeland was the area west of Minneapolis, a land of strongly glaciated topography and landforms. As such it was characterized by low rolling hills, woods, lakes and marshes. By contrast, the river valley, while being at almost at the same latitude, might as well be a different world. It is a part of the unglaciated driftless area. The bedrock is limestone, and there is a dramatic hill and valley aspect to the land, but wetlands apart from streams and rivers are hard to come by. This is a sort of landscape that would be more familiar to some Southerners than people from my neck of the woods, even though it's not a very great distance from where I grew up.

Along with the longitudinal change comes a change in the wildlife, though in this case the difference is more subtle than dense. Both areas belong to the hardwood belt, so oaks and maples are common, although on this side of the river there are more evergreens. Many of the same species that haunted the feeders in the Western Suburbs can also be seen here: large flocks of wild turkeys, deer in abundance, finches, woodpeckers, gray and red squirrels, blue jays, morning doves, and the ubiquitous nuthatches and chickadees. These are perennial forest dwellers no matter where you go in this corner of creation. One major difference though is that the numbers of crows in the western suburbs had sharply declined over time, while there are still large numbers of them here. I mentioned last week that I lived up north for a season, and I always heard barred owls at night. Here, the usual call is that of the great horned owl.

There are certain striking differences that stand out. In the area west of the twin cities, bald eagles had gotten steadily more common over time. There was a time when they were almost never seen in that area. But, everyday sightings of bald eagles can be expected in the St Croix Valley. The river valleys are now full of a species that were once rare in the entire United States. I should take a moment to note that this is the national bird, however due to environmental pollution and callous hunting practices, at one point in the last century there was a serious concern that it would go extinct. And yet here we are, in the 21st century, and they have never been more abundant in my lifetime. This is an illustration in real time of the principle of replenishment, which shows that in many instances the natural world if let alone it will recover in time.

In my native Minnesota there was a very famous bird watcher at one time Charles T. Flugum who wrote about[1] the many birds that visited his farm near Albert Lea, Minnesota as he went about his daily routine of farming. He kept a record for decades of the species that passed by, and I read the entire collection of columns that were made public, as it's kind of an encyclopedia for birds that might be seen in the north country. There were a number of species in this collection that I had never seen or saw only rarely in the suburbs. The East Bank of the St Croix River right now is like a transition zone between the exurbs of the Twin Cities and rural farmland. As such, there are farm species that would not be seen in the suburbs, including Brewer’s Blackbirds and Lapland longspurs. Other species that I never saw in the Western Suburbs include the cross bills and the tufted titmice, both of which can be routinely spotted on this side of the river.

It goes to show that one needn't stray far from one's land of origin before encountering novelty. The change in distance was not far, but the change in biodiversity is enough to be immediately noticeable to careful observation. I should add that the trend in my lifetime in all the places I've lived is toward more wild nature even in spite of very intensive urban development in certain parts of the country. Even the Western Suburbs, which got quite developed over the course of my life, still contained very luxurious woodland and wetland ecosystems. Though I abhorred the common practice of clear cutting woodlots and such in order to make room for new concrete steel and glass developments, there was still enough continuous wild land to support a considerable wildlife. Agrarian land can be about as bad an offender, with economic pressures tending toward optimum utilization, but in the driftless area, cutting the forests on the hillsides would lead to bad erosion, so in general it is not done and there are big refuges for wildlife as well. In the last century, very large preserves were also set aside to make sure that the biome was preserved to some extent.

2021 will probably be remembered as a time of crisis and troubles due to the wider political and economic context. But outside of the transient domain of human affairs, there is a wider world that we too often forget. It's there since long before we were, and it will be after we are gone too. What I find is that careful observation of the living earth is an antidote to anxieties and excessive self-importance. We are here but a short time, from the perspective of earth we're just flows of energies of barely a passing moment's significance. On this winter solstice, I wanted to adopt a new perspective, one that takes into account the eternal and timeless as well as the sound and fury of the folly of mankind. Noticing surroundings and recording what you see is one way to tap into this wider current of forces above and beyond the vanities of mere mortals. One can only hope that this increase of awareness leads to further enlightenment somewhere down the road.

On that note, Good Solstice to you and yours, a very Merry Christmastide too if you observe those practices, and may your kindly aspirations be realized in the year to come.

[1] - https://www.amazon.com/Birding-Tractor-Seat-Charles-Flugum/dp/0690009712

The first pink strands of rosy-fingered dawn were evident when I conceived to write this piece. It is only a few days since a large blizzard, the largest in years, turned the entire landscape white, a condition that I rather suspect will persist until spring. This was the scene that I woke up to, which seemed all too fitting for a time to reflect on an old project. Last year, I began a series of observations of the natural world which ran weekly. The idea was to chart the course of the seasons in my small corner of Creation, here in the Upper Midwest of the United States. Fate intervened however, which I will describe in a moment, and so it is that I now begin the project again after an absence.

The project took the form of chronicles. For some years I had lived on the Marsh, and the idea came to me to describe the nature on the marsh, and also the nature that I observed on my many wanderings around the area. I was a native of the Western Suburbs of the Twin Cities (for that is what the metro area of Minneapolis-St. Paul is called by natives, or just “the Cities”), and as anyone who is familiar with the area will know, there are many parks and reserves for the adventurous soul to explore. Given the extra free time that came with the pandemic era, I took the occasion to visit them, and then to write about what I took away, as well as my regular observations of the Marsh as well. So far so good, no?

The project came abruptly to a halt last January, that is early this year. The last entry I believe concerned a trip to the ancestral homeland of my mother's family, well to the north of the twin cities. We arrived on New Year's Day and I ended up staying a week. In the process, I saw some wondrous sights, including the most extensive ice fog events in my lifetime, turning the whole north woods into a crystal forest, and some of the most spectacular sundowns I've ever seen. Sigurd F. Olson, who wrote many reflections on life in the north woods, often described sundowns like this and it was only on this occasion that I noticed goings down of the sun that matched his descriptions. No doubt I was filled with optimism, hoping that it would inspire me to further chronicles of the natural world.

As a matter of fact, after this time, I was distracted from the project and it lapsed for quite some time. The year became a flurry of activity, some of it planned but most of it a surprise. After the trip, I went back to work and the rest of January passed rather uneventfully. February saw the coming of a deep chill, but by the end of the month, it was already evident that an early spring would dawn soon. March was an active month, with plenty of outdoor adventures beginning almost from the start of the month, and no doubt, there would have been ample material for the chronicles except that I found out near the end of the month that I would be moving to a new location. This created a definite stir, and in practical terms it meant the effective disruption of my projects for some time to come. To make matters worse, I took a cross-country road trip in April, only a short time after finding out I would move. That trip could be the subject of a book on its own.

In May, I began the long-winded process of getting the property ready to sell. I will spare the details except to say that it involved a lot of boxing and putting things into storage, cleaning things up and so on. This persisted into June. The meteorological summer had only just begun, and buyers were found almost immediately. The sale was completed, and I straight away took a week off and went back up north to the same location previously described. It came as kind of a shock, as at the beginning of the year, I had no idea or intention of moving. And to be quite honest, I had hit a bit of a rut, and was experiencing a feeling of dejection. 2020 was a difficult year for many people and it was no exception for me. For things to change so suddenly, it put my head to spinning.

Luckily, The buyers gave quite a generous term to get out of the place, so it was not until August that I had to leave for good. This was a blessing, because if you live in the same place for some years, things can get quite cluttered, and most of July was used up in making preparations. Furthermore, additional complications came into the picture. The location that I was moving to required construction, so it happened that I would have to live up north in my mother's ancestral homeland whilst the renovations were made. In a twist of fate, I ended up living in a third location temporarily. This involved quite a balancing act of moving, transporting goods, and moving again. I also had to negotiate working from home, and for a time I also had to use public Wi-Fi due to a very serious hiccup in internet service in the rural area I had moved to. It was a novel situation for me.

Not only did I move once, I moved twice this year. I ended up, completely unplanned, living in the country for an entire season -- that is, from August until November. This was in the Northwoods of Minnesota. Then in November, I finally moved to the ultimate destination, western Wisconsin, not far from the grandeur of the St Croix River. The whole thing was rather dreamlike and nostalgic. Both were places that I had spent time in my boyhood, yet never dreamed that I would live in, and certainly not so suddenly after a long and seemingly complacent period in the Western Suburbs of Minneapolis. And both afforded very different views of the natural world. It ought to go without saying at this point, that these experiences will be the jumping off point for a series of entries. The chaotic events of 2021 will go down in my personal annals as a time when the sheer momentum of events shook me out of a trance.

Hopefully, it will now be evident why a rundown of the events of this year were necessary to explain the lapse in the project, but also its rebirth. I have now in the course of a single year, lived in three very different biomes, and I've seen the changing seasons in three locales that were very dear to me since the time I was young. That provides a unique opportunity to describe the natural world from a number of perspectives that would not have been available to me in any previous year of my life. I should also note in concluding, that the previous series of entries will be published in time, to give additional context to the reader. This is intended to be the inception of a longer range project, one that I hope will prove inexhaustible, given the short life of man and the immensity of the topic at hand. A good part of science is simply industry, taking the time to record one's observations for posterity so that the subject or his successors may profit thereby.