Late winter walk

On Tuesday, March 13, I walked down the bike path to Beaver Island State Park. It was the first time that I had been on the bike path since early in January, before the arctic air blew in for an extended stay.
I had been hoping that I would have one more chance to explore my outdoor world before I turned myself in at the federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut, to begin my six-month sentence for crossing the fence at Fort Benning.
The frozen wasteland that I viewed from the window had been saying no, you're not going to explore your outdoor world without risk of frostbite or hypothermia or both.
But, on Tuesday, the temperatures soared to close to 60 degrees.
Joy filled me as I started down the bike path. I walked under the bridges that link Grand Island to Tonawanda. The wind blew, but that didn't bother me. It was warm and I was outside.
I could see the damage that the "October surprise" storm had on the trees. It was apparent where the branches had been torn from the trees by the weight of the heavy snow that had fallen on October 12 and October 13, when the branches were already heavily laden by leaves. I saw the gaping holes where the branches had been. Other branches hung onto the tree trunks but just barely.
People and dogs walked and jogged past me. All seemed joyful that they were able to get outside and that they were able to enjoy the bike path again.

emptiness

I was fascinated by this hollowed-out log and had to take a picture.

Shaking off cabin fever

I continued walking down the bike path. Some of it was still covered in snow. In the warm sunlight, the snow rapidly turned into mush. I stomped through puddles. The wind hit me on the left and on the right, and the water stirred in the puddles. I saw water bubbling out of its ice cover. People and dogs trotted past me, happy for the warmth and for the chance to shake off their cabin fever.

branches

Cold water, broken twigs, fallen tree... images of a late winter thaw...

Caterpillers

This caterpiller added color to a bleak background and offered hope of more color yet to come.

more trees

The naked trees of winter have a beauty of their own. Their beauty is in their shape. Some trees appear very geometrical, with their branches headed off in different directions. Other trees appear more rounded. The bumps and lumps and holes in the trunks are more noticeable now.

no one home yet

Another image of the starkness of winter...

no boats yet

This is the pier at Beaver Island State Park, still clogged with ice. It was near this pier that I met a man who had ice fishing gear in his vehicle. He was ready to go on the ice. He took a large, pointed stick and poked at the ice to determine how solid it was. Some of it was solid, but, at places not far from the solid spots, the ice was already starting to turn to mush in the warm air.
When I left the pier and got on the boardwalk at the beach, I saw a man who was dressed from head to toe in waterproof gear walking on the beach. He pushed a metal detector device in one hand and he held some sort of collector in his other hand. Apparently, he was searching for coins or some other sort of treasure. He seemed very intent on his task. A dog was frolicking not too far away. His human had to call several time before the dog returned to join the human and another dog.

great book!

Adams vs. Jefferson, by John Ferling, is an interesting book that took me all of about three days to read. It is about the hotly contested election of 1800 and the events that led up to it. Although the book is factual and historical, it is as exciting as a mystery.
The two main characters in the book are John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. They had little in common. Their lifestyles and their views of the world clashed. The one thing that they had in common was that they were trying to create a nation where none had existed. They were trying to invent a government that was new and different from the British monarchy that each had rejected.
What this book makes clear is that American democracy seemed to be doomed from the start to failure. When the U.S. constitution was enacted, a large percentage of the population was disenfranchised, including black people and women.
The book also addresses the issues of slavery, which, in 1800, was legal in nearly every state in the union.
It became clear to me, when I read this book, that many of the problems facing the U.S. government today are nothing new. For example, the Patriot Act is far from being the first law to limit the freedoms of Americans. in the 1790s, President John Adams managed to get an alien and sedition act through Congress. This legislation banned newspapers from insulting the president, among other things. Unprovoked wars, also, are nothing new. George W. Bush's war against Iraq is another example of how he is following directly in the footsteps of John Adams. John Ferling goes into some detail about a scandal called the XYZ affair and how that almost led the United States into an unprovoked attack on France. Apparently, the information that John Adams received that encouraged him to push for this pre-emptive assault was nothing but lies, sort of like the information that George W. Bush received about the so-called weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In the 1790s, however, Congress was not quite as willing to play along with the president. John Adams asked for a declaration of war against France, and Congress refused to do so. George Bush got Congress to "authorize force," but he never asked for a declaration of war.
Other interesting characters in the book include George Washington, James Madison, Abigail Adams, and Aaron Burr.
This well-documented book is written in an easily accessible style. The founding fathers of the United States are depicted as real people who are very much like any of the governmental leaders of today.
This is a great book! Read it if you get a chance.