My daughter introduced me to this untranslatable Swedish word today. Basically it means something like “to rise at dawn in order to go out and listen to the birds sing”. And that’s what I do. Actually it is well before dawn at this time of year. Rain or shine, snow or not.

Except. 1) I do not do severe weather. If there’s lightning anywhere near the area, I bag it. 2) I am more leery of slippery crapola than I used to be especially when it’s pitch black and I can’t see what I’m walking on, but I will venture out with ice cleats. 3) Dangereuse aminals… After seeing a video of a BARE BEAR galloping down the moominbeach at top speed early one morning, I have grown a little leery of walking the beach that early, at least during spring and early summer, when the bares bears are most likely to be out. But we don’t have bares bears anywhere near the Planet Ann Arbor. Coyotes? Yes yes yes. But (knock on wood) I am not afraid of them. Skunks? Yeah, I give those guys a wide berth.

At this time of year, the actual birds referred to in the definition are pretty quiet. There are plenty of birds that overwinter this far north so there is bird *noise* but there will not be bird *song* until sometime in February around the time Mr. Golden Sun asserts his presence in such a way that we can see summer in our future, even though there may be some long fugly months to endure before the summer season actually arrives.

But yes. Getting outside early? I am solo and can think about whatever I want or nothing at all. It allows me to focus (or not). And I like to be invisible. I wear dark clothing and sometimes get called out for it by people that think I’m gonna get hit by a car. Nope. There is very little traffic on the streets I traverse and I am very aware of what traffic there is. I (usually) stay on the sidewalks and I always stay away from automobiles. The don’t even know I’m there watching them from the sidewalk.

Gokotta!

This entry was posted on Monday, January 6th, 2020 at 7:05 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.