spynotes ::
  February 08, 2007
I walked across that burning bridge

It was ten below when I got up this morning. I seem to feel obligated to announce the weather report these days. Perhaps it�s because AJ has been so fixated on it. He runs to his window each morning to look at the outdoor thermometer, dutifully studying it. Then he runs downstairs to check the weather page of the newspaper. He looks at the local forecast. He looks to see where the hottest and coldest places are. He decides he does not want to move to Fargo (you and me both).

This morning, AJ and I ventured out into the cold, bundled up to our eyebrows, and walked down the street to the pond. Our neighborhood is traversed by a series of six ponds connected by streams and waterfalls and running ultimately down to the big river. The first three ponds are close together are about half a block from our house. The first pond was frozen and snow covered, except where the ice was fractured where the streams trickle in and out of it. But pond two never freezes. It�s deepr than pond one and it is fed by two different streams that keep the water moving. When we arrived steam was rising off the water and it was full of ducks. We counted more than a hundred. We stood and watched for nearly half an hour as the ducks first swam over to us, clearly expecting to be fed, and then, when they realized we were empty-handed, swam away. We listened to all of their varied quacks. We watched them chase each other and fight. We watched them dip under the water and shake themselves off. We watched them take off and land. They are beautiful creatures. Just as we were about to go home, an elderly man pulled up in his truck with a bag of cracked corn, which he scattered on the snowy ground in front of us. The ducks began quacking excitedly as soon as they saw him and they followed him around the perimeter of his pond. �I do this every day,� he said to us by way of explanation. One by one, the ducks bellied up to the pond�s edge and padded on their flat orange feet up the hill. Soon the patch of snow in front of us was a mass of quivering feathers and snapping beaks. We watched for a while and then followed deer tracks home along the edge of the road. �Wow, they sure are noisy,� observed AJ.

But now everything is quiet. Mr. Spy went to visit his mother, who�s stuck in the house in these frigid temperatures. AJ is at school and afterwards will go home with a friend. I�m looking at four and a half solid hours of alone time. It is a beautiful thing. From where I sit I can see three deer lying down in the snow in the woods, taking their accustomed mid-day rest. They can stay there for hours, barely visible unless you know where to look. Meanwhile, the hapless squirrel in the linden tree is busily running in and out of the nest in his tree. He scampers down the trunk about three feet then jumps across to a branch and sits there gnawing on something, his fur all fluffed up around him against the cold. I am fascinated by the leap into space. It is a gap of only three or four feet, but the squirrel just stretches out his paws and leaps, trusting that he�ll land where he think he will (and he usually does). Yesterday�s fall does not seem to have deterred him in the least. He leaps again and again.

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