Living back in Michigan has been really exhilarating for me. Every day it's like a new world outside. When we first arrived, it was beautifully warm and the leaves were frighteningly green, quite a change from the endless dreary brown grass of the hills of northern California at the end of summer. Then, fall, with it's insanity of color and endless raking. November was a wild reminder that we are alive and the universe is huge with some pretty crazy storms, power outages, and trees blowing over. Winter -- I think I will remember this winter forever. Being outside in the crisp, dead silence, flakes of frozen ice falling around you...
Then of course there were the snowmobiles. For some reason it seems to be the american way to not enjoy anything. If the air is clean and crisp and cold and silent, americans want to ride around on a noisy, smelly, hot machine. Perhaps it's because people feel powerless in their daily lives that they want to feel power over a machine, and over nature. Another downside of winter this year was that it was overcast for almost two months straight. I think we had maybe five or six sunny days during January and February.
But then, March. This year, it was sunny almost every single day in March. There is nothing quite like sitting in a comfy chair in the sun on a cold day in March. The view is breathtaking and it's always warm in the sun inside. At the end of March this year, we went to Washington DC for PyCon. At first, it was colder than Michigan, and there was no snow. But then at the end of the week, it was in the high 70s. It sure was a nice break from winter, but you know it's going to get hot and muggy there fast.
Yesterday, we had our first really big thunderstorm. Saturday we were in East Jordan and it was beautiful. Sunny, in the 70s at least, sky as clear as a bell. But Sunday the wind picked up and it started to rain on and off. Low, rumbling thunder accompanied far-off lightning flashes. The wind was gusty -- one minute it would be dead calm, the next the trees were flailing in the wind. As the storm moved over us it became completely still, and then something incredibly strange that I have never seen before happened. The water level in the lake dropped dramatically. I went out and walked around on the lake bottom, and Arianna got pictures. I had never seen anything like it before, and probably never will again.
Most people would probably think living in the middle of nowhere was boring. But for me this year, there has been something new and fascinating every single day.
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