Spent a lovely afternoon skiing today. Went to the Kalamazoo Nature Center with my buddy Dan, and got in at least two hours' worth, maybe a bit more. The sun was shining, the snow was just perfect, and we arrived back at the car just as the last pink light was fading from a mackerel sky. Saw lots of birds, starting with a big blue heron hunkered down by an open stream. We flushed an enormous hen-turkey -- probably a good twelve pounder -- and marveled at the heavy thump of her wings as she got off the ground. A large flock of Canada geese went past, low and loud enough that we could hear the whistling of their feathers. Best of all, I saw my very first Pileated woodpecker. I've been wanting to see one since I first read a story about them in Ranger Rick magazine when I was about seven, but have never been lucky enough until today. They're enormous, just a bit smaller than their more famous (and likely extinct) cousin the Ivory-billed woodpecker, and really impressive to see in flight. They have a lovely laughing call that we heard several times as we skied through the woods.
The mice were busy on the prairie preserve, and there were plenty of footprints with little tails dragging behind, moving between switchgrass and wild rye to harvest seeds. The deer were out -- we didn't see any, but did see plenty of fresh tracks, and the turkeys had been following the freshly-broken trail left by the snowshoers and skiiers (They're no dummies, Dan remarked). As we left, we passed three young guys in Carhartts, armed with snow shovels and sleds heading out to get in some crazy night sledding, which reminded me of all the crazy night sledding we used to do in Ypsi: sled shrapnel and stolen Taco Bell trays and Russ up to his shins in the Huron chasing after his saucer sled and Eric getting three seconds of hangtime before coming down right on his coccyx.
Good times.
And then I came home and made three kinds of cookie dough, for the big annual bakefest tomorrow. More on that, later.