I saw a bird. Pyrrhuloxia. Actually, two. They flew from bush to bush right in front of me. They were too fast for me and my camera, but I saw them clear as day and so did my friends. I last spotted one at Falcon Lake State Park in 1987. The recent sighting was just outside Persidio. I guess I could have found one sooner, but I’m a birder in the same way as I’m a geologist or a plant lover or a dabbler in physics. Incidental. I like to know what I’m seeing or reading, so I try to figure it out.

I like hiking. It’s where my body tells my mind, “Look, I’ve got this. You’re just along for the ride, head boy. Take a break. Look around.” So, I do. As I trudge along, I watch the trail, the plants, the mountains, the sky, the hikers ahead. It’s one foot in front of the other. A walk. A long walk. A slow walk.

Big Bend drives me to silence. All I want to do, when I’m there, is to look at the landscapes as they stretch out around me and confront the enormity of time and think about all the lifetimes it took to get from there to here. After all, it’s a land that once sat at the bottom of a sea that first formed 100 million years ago, then became pocked marked with raging volcanoes 40 million years ago, then went quiet to let wind, rivers, and rain carve the landscape into its present form, one grain of sand at a time. It’s a lovely, slow-moving panorama.

My Mexican Plum is full of blooms, for the first time ever. We had a few single blooms last year. But this year is the real deal. There are flowers everywhere, from bottom to top. I’d like to think it’s happening because I took out one of the Turks Caps to give the tree more breathing room, but it’s more likely the tree has finally matured into it fruit bearing years.

I took a small break yesterday and went to play golf with my brother. I shot 91 on a 5,000-yard course, which seems a good score for my age. The key takeaway for me is that I felt as though I hit a lot of good shots, putted well, and managed to recover my form after a string of bad holes. A good day, all in all. Breaking ninety was within my grasp.

My upright rosemary is blooming. That’s a first. I guess it needed time to acclimate to its new home. The are also green buds on three small trees, the persimmon, the Mexican plum, and the sandpaper tree. And the mealy sage a friend gave me last year is coming up from their roots. Lots of growth activity in the gardens and the grounds. At some point next month, I’ll have to get busy myself. But I have a trip coming up, and my resources are dedicated.

It seems spring is coming to the garden. It might be a tad early. It’s only February. But the bulbs are popping up, the Coral Sage is sprouting, and the grass is green. If I had been a more diligent steward I might have noted these changes through the years, then I could speak with confidence of the early or lateness of things. Unfortunately, all I can do now is speak in generalities.

Something dug up the front yard last night a little more aggressively that one might expect from an armadillo or a skunk. Has the trappings of hog work. Deep holes, lots of dirt thrown around. Unfortunately, I moved the camera monitoring that part of the yard to another location the other day. So, I was blind to the nighttime activity. I guess I’ll need to bring in another camera.

The storm is done and the sun is melting the ice and snow. Winter is once again backing off. There are still patches in the shade, but today’s high promises to send most of it packing. I might venture out. Mostly I’ve stayed on the porch since I’m no fan of ice and falls. And when I do walk around, I have a pole for support. Apparently, age brings a sort of wisdom, or a low tolerance for risk of bodily injury.

Stepped outside this morning to feed the cats, and the cold air greeted me like a rapacious animal, anxious to steal every ounce of my warmth. Icy fingers slipped beneath my jacket, inched up my pants legs, and tweaked my ears. Foolishly, I’d gone out in slippers and pajamas, wearing a thin house jacket. Luckily, the cat houses are on the southern porch and close to the door. I dropped off the food and scurried back inside.

I feel a little silly going on about this, but when your weather is the exception, rather than the rule, it’s what you talk about. It’s cold, below freezing cold. And it’s going to rain, sleet and maybe snow. The accumulation forecast looks to be light, but I’m not one to judge. I’m only here to accept my fate, although I’ll be inside so it’s not much of a terror unless something breaks, and I think the chances there are low.

If you’re prone to anxiety as, am I, then the internet is the worst thing that ever happened. It knows what interests you and gives it to you, in spades. Take the coming winter storm as it pertains to Central Texas. In its simplest form the storm is bringing cold and ice and possibly snow. But internet Cassandras are out in full force. They remind us of Snowpacolypse. They talk about ice. They warn of power outages. They are shrill. They are loud. They are constant. Why? Clicks!

We, my arborist son and I, planted a stand of Loblolly pines in the back lots. Luckily, they grow an average of 24 inches a year. So, I might get to see them grow to a decent height, ten feet in five years, twenty in ten. Maturity is out of the question because I’m what you might call mature myself. And I don’t think another 40 years is in the cards. And I can’t say, but you never know, because I’m pretty sure I do.

Went for a short walk yesterday. Stood and looked at a tree. A fairly ubiquitous sight, a tree. They’re everywhere, and they just stand there, mostly looking the same from day to day, month to month, and year to year. But as I looked at this tree, I thought of the scene in the Matrix where Neo suddenly viewed the world as strings of data and nothing was real, and I thought of the tree as a big collection of atoms, strings of data, with an entire life going on inside it.

We planted five oaks when we moved into this house sixteen years ago. Two Chinquapin. Four Lacy. And a Burr. The Lacys and one Chinquapin are part of the original planting. The Burr is the second of its kind, as is one of the Chinquapin. The current batch is doing well. I stand in their shade, strain to see the tops while there, and two of the Lacys are starting to overtop the drive, while another offers shade to our visitor parking spot.

There was a time when the noise of the highway down the street from us abated. Late at night and early in the morning. Those days are gone. The sound of rubber on asphalt comes at all hours now. The road between Johnson City and Fredericksburg, once country, has a winery and tasting room for nearly every mile between the two cities. Even Hye, a wide spot just down the road, has a winery and a distillery.

I like the black of night. The dark. Especially around the house. It’s comforting to step out onto the porch and see what only the light from the moon and the stars allows me to see. I feel one with the natural world. There's the wind and the leaves and rustling grasses. I see the movements in the shadows, hear the rhythmic noise of walking, especially the deer. 

Odd thing about life, when I go looking for something, I hardly ever find it, but when I’m not looking here something comes. On Tuesday night, I wasn’t looking for the Northern Lights, but I found them. On Wednesday night, I went looking, but didn’t see them. I did see a shooting star that felt really close, and that was a nice substitution, because I’ve gone looking for shooting stars before and never found them.

It’s exactly the sort of call you want in the middle of the night while dead asleep. “Dad! Go outside and look at  the Northern Lights.” I did as I was told and was rewarded with the most colorful night sky I’ve ever seen. And I was happy I lived in a country town with a dark sky ordinance, where the night sky counts as something we want to see and it’s not just a thing that hangs over our heads.

There’s a cold wind blowing, dried leaves are skittering down the dog run, heading south. The visiting Monarchs are departed. The heifers and their calves stopped by to feed this morning, and spooked when I came out onto the porch with my morning coffee. The cat boxes are ready for their first real test. Heat lamps go up this afternoon. I feel mostly recovered from whatever bug it was that bit me the other day. Pretty sure it was allergies, but isn’t that what everyone says.