Swans and Falling Snow

I headed down to Medicine Lake with my Canon camera and long lens this morning and photographed some of the remaining trumpeter swans in the falling snow.

Watching the swans calmly feeding and grooming themselves as snow gently fell reminded me that these birds are accustomed to weather of all kinds. In 2017 when I was staying in a cabin near Ely, MN from March through May, a pair of trumpeter swans appeared in the Burntside River as soon as the ice was mostly gone from the stream. Day in, day out I would see them swimming by the cabin where I stayed. They endured snowstorms and sunny days of northern Minnesota with seemingly equal ease.

The Snow

It sifts from leaden sieves,
It powders all the wood,
It fills with alabaster wool
The wrinkles of the road.

It makes an even face
Of mountain and of plain, —
Unbroken forehead from the east
Unto the east again.

It reaches to the fence,
It wraps it, rail by rail,
Till it is lost in fleeces;
It flings a crystal veil

On stump and stack and stem, —
The summer’s empty room,
Acres of seams where harvests were,
Recordless, but for them.

It ruffles wrists of posts,
As ankles of a queen, —
Then stills its artisans like ghosts,
Denying they have been.

— Emily Dickinson

I wonder when the last trumpeter swans will leave Medicine Lake this fall. It surprises me that they are still here. Each day if I’m out and about I take the “back way” home driving slowly along Medicine Lake to see what birds and wildlife I might see. More and more I take back roads and city streets when I go out. I find that I enjoy the more relaxed pace of driving on them rather than on the freeways.

The birds are flocking to my bird feeders this morning, filling up on nourishing food before the temperatures turn colder. I filled the feeders yesterday so that there would be plenty of food for the birds as the snow falls today.

What are you doing on this beautiful snowy day? Are you enjoying the beauty of the falling snow?

May you walk in beauty.