Letters from Josh
A Spring Wind Letter 72 3/7/22
Howdy folks! The wind is really in a bluster today…blowing up from town, whistling in my ears, wooooshing the Norway Fir tree, and driving clouds that look like sky sheep along the crest of Long Mountain. It’s a warm wind, here to convince trees to wake up and leaf out. The daffodils have started blooming on a south-facing bank by the road, and the maples are getting fuzzy buds. Now is the time I love to really “tune in” and watch the world closely. Sometimes I’ll pick a tree to monitor - there’s a nice silver maple right out my window as I type this. Noticing it’s progress not only fascinates me, but marveling at this yearly cycle seems to bring hope and positivity. Have you seen spring outside of your window yet? Speaking of observing: any University of Virginia alums reading this? I went to the school’s McCormick observatory last week, and was blown away. It sits high above Charlottesville on a site that Thomas Jefferson selected. Leander McCormick, brother of famed Cyrus, and co-founder of International Harvester, funded the construction. Renowned optician Alvin Clark built the world-class 40 foot long refractor telescope in 1894, using it to confirm that Mars indeed has two moons. The observatory collected extensive data to plot the distance to stars in our galaxy…and I got to look through it! There, at the heart of the Orion nebula, a giant cloud of glowing gas 1,300 light years away, are six stars born of this complex, orbiting around each other in a system. They’re called the “Trapezium”, making a trapezoidal shape (how’s that for inventive..not), and boy did they look sparkly! When you think “observatory”, this was it. I mean, a forty foot telescope!! You can bet your boots that I’ll be volunteering at the observatory. More stories to come! In other news: there’s a flock of wild turkeys that frequent the field near the house, just like geese in a parking lot. Two of them took issue with some starlings (birds) also foraging, and kept chasing them away. I guess the sentiment of “get off my lawn!” is universal. Additionally, the horses are warming up. Does anyone have any good tips to befriend them? Give me a call if you’ve got any ideas! And now, in closing, a fitting poem for the season: Sitting still, sniffed at by a horse, a frog. (Issa, 1825) Enjoy the early spring!
Josh