Winter Months in Grand Forks
Winter months in Grand Forks, can be an inviting, wonderful, pass time especially when taking solace, comfortible, quiet, personal, walks. The parade of different specticles tends to bring inquisitive, peaceful, nature seeing moments at it’s winter best. But getting into the habit ofthis a nightly challenging pastime is not easy adoptible. None the less it can get you aquainted with old man winter of Norh Dakota and give you some new respect for its outcome. All and all this can be a tremedious rewarding experience, if one gets stubbornly enough to force it on them. It takes mussle of the mind to just get out and keep doing it. Besides taking a walk outside is healthy; also it gives you a break from the grind of every day tiring schedules. The nightly walks around the block, can be a treasure to you in time, as you learn to put yourself in perspective for some quiet, personal, homespun enjoyment. But once in the habit within the deep North Dakota’s winter’s months takes on a new hobby all of its own! In time, it presents an experience of stillness, and coldness that is a rewarding quietness, or a renewing look at all tree and plant life. The tree’s take on a unique appearance and existence all to it’s own. The isolated tree branches take on an intirely new unihibitedness all of it’s own. This frozen lifeless form, can suddenly come to lively art form, and greatly enjoyed. It can bring new respect for surviving animals that may pop out of the blue along your walk. Also the natural course of seasonal changes, allows you to see the constant hybernation, of all plant life, representing the old and the coming new approaching Spring.
As humans, we have natural tendency to object getting so close to the cold, but there truly is a soul to it. After all, this is what Jack London saw in the Artic and Robert Service, both American Poets, who revived and polished their writing skills as young men, describing the powerful aritc winters in their climatic, ruthless, strength! So where so many of us are as neighbors here in Grand Forks, we have this experience to enjoy anytime we want too.
Our tempeture ranges here in North Dakota are 130 degrees from summer to winter. Walking is simple to do, and it teaches you how to properly dress. Also I believe it’s very healthy to take brisk walks, because it’s alternative to exercise and with them you experience North Dakota’s barren chilly chills, as being out in the wind can be a ferocious belting experience regardless of how your dressed at times making the new venture all the more “a unique experience and all one of a kind!”
You might say, ”I would rather stay home then try any of this,” however, when one get’s out and get’s aquainted with the experience of these walks, from time to time; one see’s how it can turn into an endless parade of incredible, if not spetacular art scenes, and just how simple and easy nature can perfrom here in the state of North Dakota.
Seeing is believing and in with the natural snow drift’s and how quickly they accumulate with icecycles can take itself and create the quiet stillness that is not easily found anywhere else. The texture of the frozen snow and ice combined in interweaving itself in binding swirls ties itself harmoniously to all plant life stillness aids this process and everything else helps create’s this indispensible silent world experience! Together, it all makes a surrene quiet, wilderness, void of humane life and distance’s itself from our warm, norm, way of life, it sort of seperates us from it, yet were just a few steps away from it, right outside our pourches! To me, right outside our doors, this renders pure perhistoric existence with the absence, of civilization and how it must have looked from year to year, generation to generation of past times.
The winter month’s here is the things to see and feel the earth and its surface turning and swirling into a lost, frozen death, state of emptyness, void of all human life. All are left is just still branches from clumps of stumps of endless colonies of once thriving particles of life. The sting of the chill of below zero weather adds to the whole delight of this winter experience and if you walk long enough and study everything carefully as you can, you begin to catch the feeling of the ”outer stillness”, a captivating experience of coldness that only pure nature can provide. You can actually capture so many useful sceans from cold icy snow drifts to a sordidness of still,wild,lonelyness, that must exist out there in space, at distances where sunlight never shines, and with the emergence of my own imaginitive sceans of vast planets drifting aimlessly out in orbits of dying suns or around death suns developing into further void or perhaps sponing beds of premature suns. It’s all part of the vast cold empty universe.
Then from time to time, wild animals delight the process along your walk. seeing the young, baby, rabbits and squrrels, learning how to manuver the coldness of the artic winters makes these walks all the more interesting. The birds are great observations as well. It’s so peculiar to see them almost as if they are not affected at all from deep chill zero degree weather. I saw a three crows flying around several trees and nearby sky poles as if playing in the air with ease if teasing eachother then with accuracy of threading a needle coming to rest on a near by accessible place as if it was no effort at all to rest. Just the other day I found a bird squatting, as if dead still, nestled in a large shrub outside the front of my home. I thought it humorous at first because it was colored into the brush, that is to say, having the same grays of the leafless branches that resembled quills of a sea urchant then having the reminents of any useful shrub. Being I could see solidly through the shrub, thus letting me also see the vaguely outline of this bird.
Asttonishing, i thought, this bird appeared large, as if more like a kiwi bird: a small delicate body, wingless, wirh a small head that was equipped with a small orange beak, sitting as if, like in a ball. So still, as if dead! Yet so funny, because I thought it might be stuffed. I was going to examine this bird closer just to see if it was really alive. If it was; it was resting to get warm. This was something I ‘ve never seen: a solo bird sitting in a lifeless shrub and do this.
Normally, birds will warm theselves in groups or, nest themsleves together in flocks or groups to stay and keep warm. So, to my surprise, on getting out from my car after stearing at this hunch lifeless form that did dare to move, somthing happened that I never thought ever would have happened. On hitting the freezing chill of cold of the outside air, my thoughts on examining the bird was immediately lost; and I found myself running into my home. So I lost the opportunity to examined this bird outside of my car and much more accurately.
So much for my golden opportunity to see if that bird was alive or dead or anything? Later the bird was gone when I came back to examine the shrub. I had missed a unique study; just to see what this bird was doing? To think, I had it right in front of my hood of the car. It looked so peaceful and resembled a stuff bird there in the shrub, as it was motionless! I couldn’t believe I missed out on examining this bird. Paradise lost!
It was the cold winter air that took me by the collar and got in me into the house. Later that night when I was blogging this sight; I realized I forgot all about rechecking this bird out and lost out on one of the most precious scenes of this winter. I was really confounded so and left wondering how I could have just threw away this fine opportunity. It’s like looking up seeing a blistering comet come out in the night sky as you get out of your car with the groceries and take them inside and saying, “I will go inside get some warm gear on and get my binoculars and get back out” only to get in the house and start watching TV and completely forget about the Comet. Oh well, my luck. Was this bird a frozen sparrow or what? These are just some sights that are priceless and to think i could have gotten a picture of it with my phone camera and didn’t -makes me sick. Anyone can make great fun out of walks just around the block in North Dakota winters because you never know what your going to find. It can be healthy as well and as enviting to search the trees and even the skies. This frozen display of Winter Art is everywhere and so inviting. All in it’s natural form and always in a very unique form. The more you get involved with its beauty the more alive it all becomes and the more addicting it is. Also viewing stars in the winter is one of my favorite past times. The skies are an interesting paradise on a star lit night. The prestine clear winter skies here make it all a paradise to anyone with binoculars, as they can see so much. The astronmy club from UND is also active through out some of the winter; I would believe the members are always working on projects for school. You must dress warm to really enjoy any of this, it can get incredibly cold out there. A good pair of binoculars is certainly a great companion to have viewing night skies. Then End.
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