Idle thoughts
Out of my window is a Hemlock tree---the State tree of PA. They are stately (no pun intended) large evergreen trees with "soft" needles that are almost like leaves. Looking at the one outside my window I see a ring of deep snow around the outer circumference of its lower branches and beneath their reach a circle of very limited snow.
It prompts me to recall how many times I sought refuge and comfort under the limbs of a big old Hemlock when the falling snow made deer hunting difficult. I would crawl into that place of calm and felt protected and even warmed. On occasion, I was joined by others seeking the same escape that brought me there. Once, a ruffed grouse came looking for something to eat under the shallow snow beneath the tree. It never knew I was there and walked right over one of my boots. As it went about its mission it clucked---clucked like a chicken, something I had never heard before or since. On another occasion I was treated to a visit (or was I the visitor) from a chickadee. He was a comical sort as he sat on the barrel of my rifle, looking at me as he tried to figure out what I might be, tilting his head from side to side. In an apparent effort to make a closer inspection he flew up and landed on the bill of my cap. I could see his tiny toes around the edge---and then he rotated and was staring me right in the eye---I haven't a clue as to how I didn't laugh out loud at that moment. Eventually, he tired of me and wondered off somewhere above and left me with not only a warm memory but a story to be told when I got back to the cabin that night.
While those memories are warming---I think I shall stay in the house and look through the window and let my mind take me there.
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity, an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty” ---Sir Winston Churchill
"Political extremism involves two prime ingredients: an excessively simple diagnosis of the world's ills, and a conviction that there are identifiable villains back of it all." ---John W. Gardner
“You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” ---C. S. Lewis