Year end malaise

Every year at about this time, a sense of ennui overtakes me. Whether it’s the incredibly short days or the cold weather, the leaden skies, the end of the hunting season or the slow wrap up of the football season, I have little ambition to do much at all.

Oh, I’ve a list of things a mile long I could be doing starting with the ceiling in the basement and the organization of the workshop, but the old get-up-and-go seems to have got-up-and-went. When I was still working, getting back to the routine of the classroom on the day after New Years would have kick started me. Seeing the kids and my fellow teachers again provided much needed social interaction. Now, I’ve got no schedule to which I must adhere and no pressure to perform. (Trust me, teaching is a performing art.)

Bird watching has waned as an outdoor activity as most of the lakes have frozen over and the woodland birds have taken refuge in the pines or further south. Even those at the feeders in the yard are more same-old-same-old as the usual species show up. Only regular species and the gray squirrels have visited for more than a week. This morning there were 10 or 12 tree rats out there and they’ve even spooked the evening grosbeaks from making their foray to the feeder in the morning hours. Only last week’s appearance of Black Bart, as I’ve come to call our unusual black gray squirrel, has brightened prospects around the yard. Here’s hoping that Bart continues to show up every day.

Even when the wind isn’t blowing, it’s raw outside with the temperatures hovering in the mid-30s most of the time. Most of the snow is gone but the ground is either slick with ice or mushy with mud underfoot making going out doors sloppy at best. I’d sooner there be a foot of snow on the ground but then I’d want the snowshoes I couldn’t purchase the other day when I went to Cabela’s to walk on top of it.

Oh well, we are passed the Winter Solstice and the Sun is starting to make its way back north. It won’t be long now before the real mud season makes things an unholy mess, the crocuses and trout lilies start popping their heads above the soil, leaf buds on the poplars and maples burst open, and Spring arrives.