Swallows in Chimneys, and Yet the Skiing Is Good

          A friend who lives on the Oregon coast posted, earlier this winter on Facebook, a photograph of a bird at his bird feeder that he said was a winter bird he doesn't see there often. "Is this a cooling trend?" he asks, tongue, I think, in cheek.

          In early January, my husband, who owns Home Comfort, a stove store in the Rogue Valley, was installing a new stove in a customer's house and found in the chimney a new swallows' nest. Swallows are protected birds during mating season, so their nests cannot be disturbed. The installation had to be postponed. The customer was fine with the delay. Let the birds raise their young, they said. When the babies fly away would be a good enough time to install the new stove.

          But swallows nesting in January? Didn't they know it was still winter? What were they thinking, that pair of swallows, starting their family in January?

          Is the trend towards warmer winters? Or is there a cooling trend? Think about the snow we had in the Rogue valley at the end of September. September? (And birds nesting in January?) With such a beginning, I looked forward to a wonderfully long cold winter, skiing every weekend and wearing my beautiful wool sweaters and lovely scarves.

          I sulked, then, when that promising beginning was followed by a long warm autumn. What happened to the cold winter I like so much? A snowfall just before Christmas seemed to promise its beginning, but then the temperatures rose again, and I pouted and fretted and complained again. A foot and a half of snow at my house in January sent me into ecstasy, but it melted all too soon, and we were back to autumn (if I'm being optimistic) or already welcoming spring (if I'm pessimistic).

          Somehow, though, in spite of too-warm temperatures, the skiing has been fabulous. 

On Lollipop Loop, at Fish Lake, Oregon (I'm in the red hat.)

The temperatures at higher altitudes have been just low enough to make rain down below snow up there, and the snow has been just enough on the weekends to make a soft cover over a hard-packed base. 

            There have even been days cold enough for me to wear my Uggs.

          A few weeks ago the temperatures dropped into the low twenties. Oh, it was beautiful! The trees were frosted white. Each branch, and each twig on each branch, was etched into sharpness. The fields were white. The hard grip of Old Man Winter was upon the land. Remembering that the snow didn't start till February last year and that even at that late start, we had plenty, not only for good skiing but also for summer water, I remained hopeful.

          Hope is rapidly waning.

          Is there a cooling trend or is there a warming trend? Winter birds show up on the Oregon coast as they used to do, but swallows build nests in January thinking it's spring already. It snows in September, then acts like spring, then turns ice-cold in February. What are we to make of such contradictory evidence?

          (1) We can admit that weather is not climate.

         (2) I can set aside my petty responses, realizing that for me cold weather is just a matter of what I like, not, as for native people of Alaska, for instance, a matter of life as they know it.

          (3) We can leave the predictions and interpretations to people who know a whole lot more than we do. (They say the globe is steadily and rapidly warming.)

          (4) I can like what I get, since both snow and warm, balmy days are beautiful.