INCHING TOWARDS WINTER

I headed out towards farm country to see what changes had occurred since I’d shot fall color there a couple weeks ago.  As I turned onto Hammond Road going west, the sky was dark and ominous.  I clicked on my phone weather apps and it looked like precipitation was going to hit in twenty minutes.  Turn back or keep going? 

Of course, I kept going.  I noticed changes right away.  The vibrant colors were gone.  Many trees had lost their leaves, and the ones with remaining color had turned dull.

The trees in the farmhouse yards had left their golden beauty on the ground, ready for raking.

I came to a large pond, usually teeming with ducks and other critters.  Today, it was completely devoid of critters.  The precipitation began to fall but in the form of fluffy snowflakes. 

I drove on and saw a sure sign of winter’s approach.  Christmas trees were being cut and baled at a tree farm on my route. 

Finally, I saw the first sign of life, two young deer grazing in a far meadow.  It was evident that the color changes to their coats were happening.  Gone were their reddish coats of summer, and, in their place were coats of brown designed to better camouflage them in forested areas.

Cranes had been on my mind the whole time I drove, and I hadn’t seen any evidence of their migration.  I was nearing the farm where I often saw my family of four, and I was fairly certain they’d be gone.  But there they were, feeding and watching in the lightly falling snow.

I was excited to see the family, as always, but I was also disturbed.  Shouldn’t they be on their way south by now?  Cold weather and snow were on their way, after all.  Shouldn’t they have joined the large migrating flocks I’d seen earlier?  You know, safety in numbers.

And then I had another thought.  I’d seen a pair of cranes dancing and mating in this farm’s cattle pen late in the spring, before the cattle had arrived.  I’d wondered all season whether those two cranes were the parents of the two juveniles.  Could it be that this farmer was providing a safe habitat for these cranes, and they weren’t migrating cranes at all?  I hoped to find out.