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December 8, 1996
The wind roared, the power flickered on and off so many times I turned off everything in the house for fear of surge damage. Trees bent so low they look like creeper vines along the ground. This stuff is wet, really wet, extremely wet, radically wet.
The funny thing about this storm is the over hype on the news. Looking out my window in the morning, the snow that I saw piling up and bending trees to the ground last night seems to be gone. Did it change to rain while I was asleep? There's still some snow around - maybe 6 inches or so - but not the 2 feet the news keeps saying hit us. For once, the Merrimack Valley's having its own weather worked in our favor. Not that things are all that great. The traffic lights are out. Lots and lots and lots of homes are without power. I'm in one of the lucky zones. The power flickered a lot but didn't stay out.
I was so taken with the brilliant blue sky and the temperature soaring into the 40's that I put aside all trepidation about going out into the damaged terrain on my sprained ankle. I managed to get my car out without spraining anything else, and I headed to Providence, which got hardly any snow, and what they had was melting rapidly. I picked up Nancy early enough that we could go to brunch at Rue de l'Espoir and still have plenty of daylight left for birding. We even stopped off at an estate sale of a guy who collected used/rare/old books. 4000 volumes. We browsed a lot but didn't buy. It felt weird traipsing through the guy's house and pawing through his books even though he died in June. I mean it's not like it just happened yesterday. Lots of good stuff on surrealism and Dadaism. Several books of poems by Tristan Tzara - coincidental after I had just been talking to Nancy over brunch about putting that Tristan Tzara quote on my journal index page. Anyway, we had a great browse and still have plenty of daylight left for birding.
The reeds around Watchemocket Cove were all beaten down by the snow and there were lots of puddles, but it was low tide so those of us willing to get a little (a lot) muck on our boots could get fairly close to the birds on the golf course side (I can never remember which side is called north and which side south because it's really more of an east-west split). We sat on some rocks on the other side and watched people feed the tamer birds (the swans and the gulls) over there for some time. It was just spectacular. The birds seemed invigorated by the gorgeous weather. The breaders and the birders were out in force. We spent an hour and a half or so just hanging out at the cove watching and identifying and counting birds. Then we took a slow cautious walk (bad ankle and all) on the East Bay Bike Path, which runs next to the railroad tracks between the bay and the cove. This was the first time we ventured over there and it gave us a whole different perspective on the cove.
The list:
As were walking back along the path we saw a group of swans flying in formation: 2 adults and 4 cygnets. This is the first time I have seen any of the cygnets fly. I assume since they are so close to having adult plumage they must also have adult daily living skills but this is the first time I've actually witnessed it. I have no idea how long they've been flying.
When it was finally too dark to see the birds and the sunset faded to a pink glow behind the gas tanks across the bay, we limped back to the car and capped off the day with a dinner at Taste of India.