Gotta Love a Good Snowfall

This morning's view from the dock just outside our field office (a.k.a. the "bunkhouse"); just a couple-few well placed
inches of fresh snow make for a pretty stark contrast, considering this ice wasn't even formed a few days ago

Part of my job (and my life at this stage, for that matter) is appreciating the things that I love the most by seeing them through other people's eyes. My partner in crime, my manager Roy, often provides the lens through which I get to see the marsh. When the business of my responsibilities keep me at my desk or at least in town, I've become pretty accustom to living vicariously through his work in the field. Despite the fact that today brought some of my favorite weather -- reliable snowfall with not too much wind and just enough cold to feel relatively confident that it's going to stick around for at least a little while -- I spent today behind glass in my home office.

Even Phragmites can look attractive under a white blanket
(as always, click to see detail)

While paying bills, updating accounting, and working through administrative and project management priorities for our grant that will fund our new West Marsh water conveyance structure is a far cry from hiking through newly fallen snow, it was a good day. It's been a good couple days, actually.

Sure, I would have loved to have been on the other end of the camera. I would have loved to have witnessed shrinking openings in the marsh ice continue to shrink while watching the icy expanse over Sandusky Bay continue to extend so far off-shore that it is now hard to see an end from our shorelines. I would have loved to have felt the cold on my face, have had to blink a few extra times to melt falling snowflakes from my eyelashes. I really would have loved rounding out the afternoon and early evening in a tree stand. To me, few things rival a late afternoon bow hunt on truly fresh snow -- especially as a "storm" is coming in (as the climaterrorists now like to call the 2-4" we were forecast to get today through this evening).

But other priorities called. And as has been the case for a couple straight days now, I felt like I was relatively efficient and effective in my work. Through periodic phone contacts with Roy, I "moved the ball down field" (to use a football analogy) on several important fronts. I continued to make progress. And just like fresh snow, that's something that pretty much always brings me joy and satisfaction.

Roy's camera is facing west/northwest from the northwest corner of our main West Marsh dike; his perspective not
only captures the dwindling open water of our "estuary" (the connection between our marsh and Sandusky Bay),
it also shows how much the ice cover has expanded in the main bay (background) over just a couple short days

Hard to believe this scene would have been teaming with dragonflies and bullfrogs just a few short months ago;
the muskrat hutch (left foreground) is a not-so-subtle reminder that there is still plenty of life busy living
even under winter snow and ice