Northfield Archives | Page 46 of 50

Woodchuck Run

Apropos of my post yesterday, I wound up today talking with Nancy Braker, the director of the Carleton Arboretum and, as such, someone who knows much better than I do what sorts of animals inhabit the Arb. Though gently supportive of my desire for yesterday’s creature to have been a fisher, she equally gently told me that in all likelihood I saw a woodchuck. A Google image search for woodchucks turned up photos of a creature that looks intolerably like the beast I saw yesterday on my run. How wrong could a runner be if a runner could be wrong? Really, really wrong.

Fisher Run

Winding up a run in the sodden, glistening Arb this afternoon, I was heading back toward campus along the river trail when I saw a cat-sized brown animal dart across the path ahead of me and up a dead tree. “Weird – a raccoon out at noon?”

I slowed down to look up at the animal, but then stopped when I saw that it had no mask. The little beastie nestled into a vee of two branches and peered down at me with a frank black-eyed look, clearly wishing I’d move along. I walked a couple steps to get a different angle. The creature had a wide, furry body and a long fuzzy tail – the size and shape of a raccoon, but a solid dark brown or black, rather than the grays and light browns of a raccoon. “Weird – a mink? a weasel?” I jogged off to let the whatever-it-was get back to whatever it was doing.

I wondered about the animal all day. When the girls went to bed, I paged therough my Mammals of Minnesota field guide and the Minnesota DNR’s excellent online guide and figured that – based on size, coloration, and the funny look of its eyes – it was a fisher, one of the rarest mammals in Minnesota, and much more common up north.

Portraits

Join me, won’t you, as I try nine times to get a good picture of the girls at Spring Creek Park on Saturday afternoon.

Visitors’ Day

For the second straight year, Julia chose me to be her visitor at Northfield Nursery School’s annual visitors day, so I spent this morning wading through a sea preschoolers. Man, oh man: LOUD. It’s no coincidence that a hearing aid battery died immediately afterwards.

Less geriatrically, it was hugely fun to have Julia show me around the nursery school, pausing at each station for a greater or lesser amount of time. We spent a lot of time at the various craft tables, including the Q-tip painting table, the various easels, and the biggest, bestest craft table, where Julia spent a long time making a card for Shannon – a card which then had to be put in a box, like a present. One of her saintly teachers hunted down a big box for the card, which we then toted home.

Amidst all that activity, I was also able to meet and talk with many of Julia’s friends, who were all cute in their own way. Just the same, I’m glad I don’t have to hang out with them too much. Julia talks incessantly at home, but she could hardly get a word in among all the chatterboxes at school. The best moment came early in the day, when Julia’s teacher reminded the class that she would be leaving early to attend a funeral. Instantly, several kids offered various scenarios that could lead to a person’s death, with car crashes being the most popular. To the relief of all the visitors, the teacher managed to skillfully route this conversation back to happier, more nursery-schoolist topics, such as the fact that it was the first day of spring. Julia, ruminating on this all day, asked later, “So if today is the first day of spring, does that mean that Saturday is spring second?”

Yes, honey, it does.

Bizarro Gym

My trip to the gym today was a bizarre one, from the moment I stepped out of my office building into a ridiculously loud cacophony of birdsong. For a second, I thought maybe some students were filming a movie and running a high-volume recording of birds. Nope, just a zillion returned migrators in the trees out front.

I avoided any sort of Tippi Hedren incidents, and made it to the gym. There I discovered that the new fluorescent lights (like many, but not all, others around campus) were producing a horrible low-pitched whine in my hearing aids. (I can barely go to meetings in one campus building, the light-induced whine is so bad.) Luckily, I don’t wear my aids when I work out, so this didn’t bother me for long. As I changed, someone’s cell phone – entombed in a locker – started ringing, a crazy 120bpm rhythm with a rising melody. It rang for an appropriate number of seconds, went quiet, and then started again. Quiet, then ringing again. In a hurry to get the hell away from it, I tied my shoes in the hallway.

Down in the fitness center, I chose a treadmill offering equally good views of two different TVs. I figured that both would probably be airing the usual sorts of noontime crap, but that it would be different crap, and since I could look back and forth between them, that I would consume just half as much crap. Sure enough, the right-hand screen showed first a soap opera (all dark-haired men with lantern jaws and blonde women with Victoria’s Secret cleavage) and then live coverage of the AIG hearings on Capitol Hill (all pasty white guys gesticulating wildly and talking sternly back and forth).

Thankfully, and in utter distinction from those two sorts of drivel, the left-hand screen was tuned to a show on the History Channel: the history of ice cream. It was educational and entertaining! I actually learned quite a bit about the differences between regular ice cream, soft-serve ice cream, and frozen yogurt, and about the corporate niches of Dairy Queen, Ben & Jerry’s, and TCBY. (I also learned about the insane “Vermonster” sundae at B&J’s. The 20 scoops of ice cream just start the craziness.) Actually, come to think of it, the show was basically an advertisements for those companies and their products, a point reinforced by actual ads for DQ between the segments of the show. Well, DQ ads and ads for debt-relief agencies. Which are basically just two forms of commentary on American indulgence.

As the show wound on, its educational aspects were replaced by an insanely strong desire for ice cream, and lots of it. I ended my workout just as the show ended and headed back to the locker room, where, of course, the cell phone was still ringing, and ringing, and ringing. Again hurrying to get away from its satantic ring tone, I chose the nearest shower stall and cranked on the water – and discovered that the shower curtain was a good four inches narrower than the space between the sides of the stall. It was like showering in a hospital gown. I hurried through my shower and went back to the locker room, where the owner of the cell phone – someone who did not look like the sort of person who likes 120bpm music – was happily chatting away. Naked.

I’ve never gotten dressed so fast. I was heading out the front door of the gym within five minutes, back toward the still iced-over Lyman Lakes and my office.

Stop the Clock, Please

My mind – which has benefited from three consecutive nights of unbroken sleep, thanks to the incredible success (knocking on wood or wood byproducts) of Operation Get Genevieve to Sleep Without Crying – is nonetheless utterly blown right now by three consecutive days of Julia-related accomplishments.

On Saturday, she picked up a random magazine I’d been reading and started sounding out the words, doing the halting one-letter-and-sound-at-a-time thing that leads, more or less slowly, to whole words. I was astounded, and told her so. “Oh,” she said, casually. “I do this when I read in my mind all the time.” I don’t know if she’s telling god’s honest truth here, but I am inclined to believe that she is indeed at least beginning to read – not just recite – to herself. Testing her at various points that day and on Sunday with things I knew she wouldn’t have had read to her (signs outside, for instance), she batted about .600, which is pretty good.

Sunday, we hit Northfield’s best park. I had to spend most of my energy helping Vivi, which meant that Julia had to either wait for me to get out of the way or find a way around me. As I helped Vivi up a ladder on one side of the play structure, who should pop up on the other side, having ascended a rather tricky and high climbing wall, but Julia. Totally easy for her. Last fall, she was reluctant to even have me help her get up this thing.

And then tonight, Shannon and I went to the information session on kindergarten at the school where Julia will go in the fall. Actually, on September 8, 2009. There’s an exact date now. And while the orientation itself was prosaic and perfectly pitched to the mass audience, I lost several neurons when the principal welcomed “the parents of the class of 2022.” I can already see “Seniors Rule! 2022!” soaped on the back window of my rusty 2014 Honda electric minivan.

Do-It-Yourself Ready-for-Spring Blog Post

Stealing shamelessly from my blog friend Colin here and here, I am hereby providing a handy Do-It-Yourself Ready-for-Spring Blog Post and (at the bottom) an even handier Do-It-Yourself Ready-for-Spring Status Update. (Your options – all of which I have chosen for their perfectly descriptive neutrality – are grouped within brackets [ ] and separated by pipes |.)

Do-It-Yourself Ready-for-Spring Blog Post

Do-It-Yourself Ready-for-Spring Status Update
(You know, for Facebook or Twitter or whatnot.)

Bouncing Around

Like I said, there was a lot of physical and psychological jostling in that last weekend, nowhere more than in the “bounce house” put up at the Northfield Nursery School‘s winter social on Saturday morning. The last time Genevieve tried one of these things, in fall, she literally couldn’t even stand up on the bouncy floor. I had to retrieve her, crying, from a far corner.

This time, she joyously walked, ran, bounced, fell, crawled… She and Julia had a grand time. We need one of these things at our house.

Snow Giant

On Wednesday, the week-old snow had turned wet, sticky, and granular – bad for skiing, but perfect for getting our snowman on.

As the Snow Ends

I took the day “off” today to recover from the harried trip to D.C., to spend some time with the girls, and to give Shannon a bit of a break. I say “off” because eleven hours with the girls – as delightful as they are – isn’t exactly restorative.

But the girls did take a good long nap, during which I snuck off to the Lower Arb for what might be the last ski of the season. Though last week’s snow is already thin in many spots, all of the trails were skiable, even over the wet sticky snow. Trying to glide was basically a war with surface tension: I could actually hear my skis adhering to the moisture in the snow, then popping loose. This made movement slow and laborious.

On the other hand, going so slowly made it easier to notice that there are already tiny little buds on some trees and a certain green hue to the fields. As much as I hate to admit it, spring is on the way.

Last Ski of February

I’m off to Washington, D.C., for a conference on Sunday afternoon, so I felt an especially strong urge to enjoy the still-fresh snow today. The Lower Arb didn’t disappoint.

Greatest Commute Ever

Watching the blizzard on Thursday, I was seized by a renewed desire to ski to work. The notion originated in a blog post by Alex, an e-quaintance (and a fast skier) who roller-skied to work in Boston last summer.

The idea really took hold earlier this winter, though, when I realized that my house isn’t too far from the Northfield golf course, which runs close to the Arb, which abuts campus, which contains my office.* Then the snow melted, leaving me to my wheeled devices.

Until today. Yesterday’s “Snowmaggedon” made the ski commute feasible again (as a commenter noted), so I worked out the timing and did it. Owing to an, shall we say, indirect route, I had to budget quite a bit of time, but I reached the Carleton Rec Center (where, for perspirational reasons, the commute ended) after a solid 55 minutes of skiing.

My route (about 4.2km/2.6 miles altogther) took me out my backyard, along a street, across part of the Northfield Golf Club‘s course, and then through Carleton’s Upper Arboretum. I climbed up and over eight snow berms, sank to my hips in one deceptive drift on the golf course, and made four road crossings, one of which included a satisfyingly odd look from a passing motorist.

It was, in a word, fantastic. Under a brilliant sun and sky, the pure white snow was untracked except by a few critters – deer, rabbits, squirrels, and either a Yeti or a snowshoer. The whole thing was great, but the best moment came as I skied down an incline on the golf course fairway: behind me, the sun suddenly emerged from a cloud, lighting up everything around me and casting my dark black shadow down the hill. Amazing. The view back up the slope wasn’t terrible, either. (Click through for other photos, including one shot by a nice young woman who agreed to take a picture of the dude in the weird hat.)

* My other oddball goal for the winter is to do a 50km ski session in the Lower Arb. It’s harder than it seems, since the trails only let you create 8km or 9km loops. Anyone for a few laps?

2 Haiku for Snow II

II. A

Is this is the last snow
Stinging my face? Twenty feet
Is too far to see.

II. B

The meeting murmur
Stopped so we could listen and
Ponder the thunder.

(Haiku for Snow I)

Experiment Results

After one field test, the investigator can definitively report that the unconventional handlebar configuration depicted in Figure I is wholly unsatisfactory with respect to the operation of a bicycle.

Figure I

The deviation of the handlebars from the conventional orientation (in which the handlebars are at a right angle to the plane of the wheels and frame) makes steering difficult, if not impossible. Interestingly, this difficulty is encountered while attempting to walk with the bicycle, as well as – presumably – while attempting to ride it. (The investigator did not attempt to ride the thusly-configured bicycle, only to walk it approximately 500 meters.)

In addition to the difficulties inherent in operating a bicycle configured in this way, the investigator would like to comment on the unsatisfactory nature of the configuration process. To carry out this field test, the investigator “crashed” the bicycle while making a right-hand turn at a relatively low speed. Owing to ice, this turn quickly devolved into the type of crash sometimes called a “lay down.” Though the precise sequence of events cannot be recalled, the end state found the investigator lying prone on the street approximately three feet from the bicycle. After a few deranged-sounding shouts and curses, the investigator rose to discover that the crash had reconfigured the handlebars in the manner illustrated. The handlebars were later returned to the conventional orientation. The investigator injured his left thumb and his ego, which had been badly mangled in two crashes earlier in the winter.

Coda Clothing

Wandering this way and that around campus this week, I’ve been noticing that students’ clothing choices invert their choices back in, say, October. Then, on the first few chilly days – a sunny, autumnal 40°F without snow, rain, or wind – quite a few students dressed for an Antarctic expedition: parka, winter hat, gloves, even Uggs. Some layering was definitely in order, back then, but perhaps a fleece or a windbreaker over a sweater, not Roald Amundsen.

These days, we’ve got substantially harsher weather in every comparative respect – 15°F and windy, most often – and yet the parkas have mostly been replaced by fleeces, or even just sweaters. The Uggs are still in evidence, but there aren’t very many gloves or hats to be found. It’s a prayer: “If I dress like this, spring will come…”