On the Wildside

This is the weird time of the year. Now that the end of daylight saving has been moved back a week, this time of the year is in sort of a limbo. For so many years we dutifully changed our clock back the weekend closest to Halloween, making it so dark for the little ghosts and goblins that we really had to adjust our driving for that special night. Not that we should have made allowances for all the foot traffic anyway, but it just made it that much harder. Now, with the clock back up being moved forward a week, it is like waiting for the other shoe to drop. You know the change is coming, but you are just not sure when. Or worse yet, did I miss the day and forget to turn my clock back? What is so ironic about this whole event is really how arbitrary the counting of time really is. Some cultures end their day count or begin a new day when an official can not tell the difference between a piece of white thread and black. Think about that, the simplest idea, makes the most sense. Now this does have to do with knowing when to begin the religious day, sundown being the beginning of that day of observance. So when you can no longer tell the difference between white and black, the new day has begun. There seems to be so many other lessons in that, but we’ll save that for another time. We usually mark the beginning of spring by the saying ‘in like a lion, out like a lamb’. But several weeks ago or so in mid October we found that fall storms can be just as strong. According to the national weather service the late storm that came through our area and wrapped up to the Great Lakes was rated as a category one hurricane. It brought rain, hail, snow and high winds to a fifteen state area eventually blowing itself out in the Canadian maritime provinces. The barometric pressure was one of the lowest recorded in the United States for that time of the year in almost 50 years. So what does this say to us? Nature really doesn’t care what we are up to, she is going to do her thing, in spite of what we think or do. We just have to understand and prepare for the worse, get our shelters ready for the coming winter. In the first weeks of November we have had at least two days of real cold, several killing frosts and several days of highs in the 70s. But hold on, the roller coaster ride has just begun. The cold, snow and stormy weather is coming no matter how much we think we are in control. Get over it. You can’t flip a switch or turn a valve and change the weather outside to a whit. Just gather up your firewood, caulk the windows and doors, seal out the bad weather and make sure you have plenty of popcorn and hot chocolate on hand, winter is coming…ready or not. By next month we’ll have already have had at least one snow. See you then.