We’ve reached the 20th anniversary of our move to Gold. Twenty years ago we left Southern California and drove across the country to settle in this new home, which was actually an old home. Blessings and miracles brought us here. I still live in awe that I actually live in this place. Twenty years ago when we arrived here, I made a vow to myself that I would always remember how beautiful this place is and how wonderful living here is. I found that some people who have been here a long time or all of their lives sometimes take for granted the things that make living here so good. I did not want to grow complacent or let increasing familiarity breed contempt for this place. I wanted the miraculousness of it to remain fresh. I think I’ve managed to do that.
One of the things I found strange when we moved here was that some people who live here go south for the winter. I’ve known about “snowbirds” from living in the Southwest where many of them migrate to, but here? I thought, why would anyone flee beautiful Potter County to go to some overdeveloped and crowded place like Florida or Arizona or California for months out of the year? I was younger then and, after living in L.A. for twenty years, still somewhat enamored with winter and snow. I’ve grown older and wiser. I still do love winter – to a degree. Unfortunately, winter always oversteps that degree. The older I’ve gotten, the more I mind it. The idea of spending the bleakest part of the winter – January to mid-March – in someplace warmer and sunnier grows increasingly desirable to me.
Last year in February we went to Italy. It was a short trip, but it was long enough to break the winter doldrums for me and give me a taste for traveling. Sadly, this year we won’t be going to Italy – but we might be going to Florida. Stacey’s employer (who is 95 years old) has a sister (who is 91) who lives in Naples, Florida, and he wants to go down and visit her in February. Stacey will need to go along to take care of him. He wants to be there for several weeks. Since she will be gone so long, Stacey asked if her husband (that’s me!) and her daughter (Miriam) could go along too and he agreed. The arrangements are not final yet. It might not even happen. But I’m excited to think that it might.
I’ve never been to Florida. The furthest south I’ve been is North Carolina and that happened just a few months ago when I went there to visit my parents and my sister Hollie and her family. I was intrigued by the differences I saw there. It seemed a bit exotic. Florida will be even more exotic. If we go, I’m making a list of things I want to see while I’m there. There are birds I want to add to my life list. There are plants, especially orchids, that grow there that I want to see. I want to see a manatee and an alligator. I want to go shell collecting on a beach on the Gulf of Mexico. Just the thought of leaving here, where our average temperature in February runs from the low teens to sub-zero, to spend a few weeks in a place where the average temperature is near 80°, is very appealing to me. Someday I might even consider doing this every winter. I might become a snowbird. But I’ll always have to be back home in time to start my seeds in March. And I’d never want to miss out on being here when the first thrilling signs of spring emerge.
One of the things I found strange when we moved here was that some people who live here go south for the winter. I’ve known about “snowbirds” from living in the Southwest where many of them migrate to, but here? I thought, why would anyone flee beautiful Potter County to go to some overdeveloped and crowded place like Florida or Arizona or California for months out of the year? I was younger then and, after living in L.A. for twenty years, still somewhat enamored with winter and snow. I’ve grown older and wiser. I still do love winter – to a degree. Unfortunately, winter always oversteps that degree. The older I’ve gotten, the more I mind it. The idea of spending the bleakest part of the winter – January to mid-March – in someplace warmer and sunnier grows increasingly desirable to me.
Last year in February we went to Italy. It was a short trip, but it was long enough to break the winter doldrums for me and give me a taste for traveling. Sadly, this year we won’t be going to Italy – but we might be going to Florida. Stacey’s employer (who is 95 years old) has a sister (who is 91) who lives in Naples, Florida, and he wants to go down and visit her in February. Stacey will need to go along to take care of him. He wants to be there for several weeks. Since she will be gone so long, Stacey asked if her husband (that’s me!) and her daughter (Miriam) could go along too and he agreed. The arrangements are not final yet. It might not even happen. But I’m excited to think that it might.
I’ve never been to Florida. The furthest south I’ve been is North Carolina and that happened just a few months ago when I went there to visit my parents and my sister Hollie and her family. I was intrigued by the differences I saw there. It seemed a bit exotic. Florida will be even more exotic. If we go, I’m making a list of things I want to see while I’m there. There are birds I want to add to my life list. There are plants, especially orchids, that grow there that I want to see. I want to see a manatee and an alligator. I want to go shell collecting on a beach on the Gulf of Mexico. Just the thought of leaving here, where our average temperature in February runs from the low teens to sub-zero, to spend a few weeks in a place where the average temperature is near 80°, is very appealing to me. Someday I might even consider doing this every winter. I might become a snowbird. But I’ll always have to be back home in time to start my seeds in March. And I’d never want to miss out on being here when the first thrilling signs of spring emerge.
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| Alligators, seashells, ghost orchids, manatees - Florida! |
One of my favorite authors, the naturalist Edwin Way Teale, wrote a series of books where he and his wife Nellie set out to follow the course of the four seasons as they move across the United States while stopping to explore some of the natural wonders along the way – North With the Spring (1951), Autumn Across America (1956), Journey Into Summer (1960), and Wandering Through Winter (1965). I’ve read all of them several times. In North With the Spring, they started out in Florida in the Everglades in late February (when spring actually begins that far south) and made their way north, visiting places like Shell Island, Sanibel, the Suwannee River, and Okefenokee Swamp. They kept going northward, stopping at other interesting places and ended their trip at Mt. Washington in New Hampshire on the first day of summer. Because I’ve read his account of those places in Florida and we will be staying near some of them, I’ve put them on my list of places to see.
I love those books so much that I’ve considered writing a series of sequels where I retrace Teale’s journeys and report on how the places he wrote about are now, almost seventy years later. It would be a huge undertaking and my accounts would probably end up being depressing as I doubt most of those places have fared well in the decades since he saw them.
Here in the frozen north where Florida seems as distant as another planet, there are some happy things happening to defy winter. My Aunt Joyce’s amaryllis is blooming and several of my orchids have flower stems emerging.
I love those books so much that I’ve considered writing a series of sequels where I retrace Teale’s journeys and report on how the places he wrote about are now, almost seventy years later. It would be a huge undertaking and my accounts would probably end up being depressing as I doubt most of those places have fared well in the decades since he saw them.
Here in the frozen north where Florida seems as distant as another planet, there are some happy things happening to defy winter. My Aunt Joyce’s amaryllis is blooming and several of my orchids have flower stems emerging.
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| My Aunt Joyce amaryllis. |
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| Flower stems (they are there) on my orchids. |
We had some weather this weekend. During the week they warned us that a “possibly significant” winter storm was coming. I work on the theory that the more dire the warnings, the more likely the storm won’t amount to much. I had errands to run yesterday. I needed to go to the Amish Dry Goods Store, the bank, and the dairy to get milk. That was all toward Ulysses. Then I was going the other way into Coudersport to buy chicken feed and do some grocery shopping at the Shop ‘N Save. It was only snowing lightly when I left the house. By the time I came out of the Amish store, it was snowing harder and settling on the roads. I went on into Ulysses to the bank and the snow got heavier. I decided not to go into Coudersport, so I stopped at the new Dollar General to see what groceries I could get there. While I was in the Dollar General, almost every person I met was someone I knew. I saw our neighbor Danielle and her daughters. I saw John Moon who used to own the farm supply store in town and is now retired. And I saw Betty Tomak. We always call her Gold Store Betty. When we moved here, she ran the Gold General Store. The store is gone now and we still miss it. While we were standing in the checkout line talking, I told Betty that my children, now grown up, still reminisce about the days when they would walk down to the Gold Store with whatever money they could scrounge up to buy as much penny candy as they could. They consider those days The Golden Age of their childhood. Betty laughed and said she used to love it when my children came into the store, they were so cute. Yes, they were. I love living in a small community. I went on to the dairy and then went home to stay. The chickens have enough feed to last a few more days. I’ll go into town tomorrow.
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| Definitely not Florida. |
As for the winter storm, it was significant enough to keep us home all day yesterday, but not enough to cancel church today. We only got about four inches of snow, but the wind blew pretty hard and made drifts, some of them a foot or more deep. So it wasn’t all that significant. I drove up to church at 7:30 for an 8:00 branch presidency meeting. Stacey and Miriam went later for the regular meetings. The roads were only a little bit scary. Coming home, they were fine. It’s still snowing a little, but we’re in for the remainder of the day and there is a fire burning in the wood stove and lunch is almost ready and it smells delicious and sometime soon I feel a nap waiting for me. Good Sabbath.
