Travel on the Gravel

Driving home this evening, I was headed west on 19th Avenue when I looked to the south across the experiment station plots. There I espied a frolicking flock of whitetail jackrabbits, fifteen or twenty of them, chasing one another around in the fresh, fluffy snow that had fallen over the weekend. I thought, how nice the bunnies are enjoying the clean snow and warm (high 20s) temperatures, but then I realized they were not just frolicking but were, in fact, doing that for which rabbits are well-known. Another sign of the seasons. Around here we don't note signs of spring so much as gradations of winter. This is the night of the snow bunnies.

The past three days temperatures have been trending upward, so that it looks like today we'll have a high above freezing. This follows more than two weeks of deep-freeze winter, lows around 20 below most nights. Nevertheless, on most days the sunshine was abundant, and so the cold wasn't depressing. This is no time to talk about spring, of course, because ugly March lies ahead, but even in a winter landscape it is worthwhile to mark small transitions. Snow buntings, for instance. During deep winter they are mottled, so that when they arise in a flock, they are a blur. Now their black-and-white markings have become clearly defined, so that on a clear day, the birds are like a flock of little blinkers swirling above the snow and stubble. Today will be partly at home, partly in town. I have a pheasant thawing, from which this evening I'll filet the breasts to make a fricassee with squash and couscous. That's another way to take the edge off winter--not just good eating, but eating that evokes other seasons. A pheasant from fall, a butternut squash, perhaps even a catfish of summer.