It is morning after the snowfall that was blizzard for most of the East Coast, especially south. The forest outside my Canal Road windows looks menacing, against a sky more Prussian than blue.  Pre-dawn snow emanates a sharp, even shrill blue like the ion light on my fake sunlamp.  A blue that won’t turn off unless I unplug the contraption that’s s’posed to make up for no sun in these rooms.

Brenda Jones captures verticals and horizontals splayed along new snow.

Nor’easter snow remains pasted all along the verticals, curves, slants and branches of trees studding this new landscape.  Conical hats with folded tips lift above pine needles, tufts high as the Phrygian caps of the French Revolution, –only white, not red.  Other snow on the evergreens is clotted, quite seriously anemic.  Ironically, white pines are the darkest entities in this sun-starved woods.

Ever since 5 a.m., –since I’m not in Cumberland County getting ready for ‘my’ eagles–, I’ve been reading C.L. Rawlins’ poetic description of gathering snow samples in the West’s Wind River Range.  His next line, after I finish these snow notes, is, “The snow has a frigid blue as we head on in.” The book is “Sky’s Witness”, ordered through the Princeton Public Library, provided by Firestone Library.

Now the Prussian sky has paled, turning both deciduous trees and conifers to obsidian.  Ground snow continues to glow eerily, as though something is decaying under there.  Or, on a happier note, reminding me of special effects at childhood’s “Ice Capades”, –blue-black light shining on ice dancers until their costumes nearly ignited, reflected in glossy ice.

If I were in Cumberland County right now, I’d be out on Turkey Point’s wind-strafed reaches, with the staunch Karen Johnson, –daunted by neither wind nor weather.  One year, on the Turkey Point footbridge, no one could use scopes because winds caused the bridge to writhe.  We actually became dizzy, trying to bird through unsteady lenses.

If I’d been down there today, we’d have gathered in half-light, half-recognizing fellow bird trekkers of other years.  There’d be that pre-dawn murmuring, softer than ever today because coming through face-masks and mufflers.  We’d be trying to tiptoe despite thick boots and thicker socks.  Above all, before sunrise, we would all be listening.  If we were very lucky, various owls would be carrying on, bemoaning loss of darkness as I mourn loss of light.

The electricity of that pre-dawn fellowship is an unexpected gift of the birding obsession.  Everyone hushed yet excited.  Attuned ‘to the nth degree’.  Binoculars at the ready, for the lifting of the light.

Especially in January and February, there is fullness to to the emptiness of the Point, that no amount of side-by-side cars and more arriving all the time can dilute.  There is quiet rejoicing as the first fleck of sun-flame appears over the marsh.  Then, blessing of blessings, that first brush of wing-shadow.  When Pete Dunne is along, he is always particularly exultant at the sight of the first of his favorites - the Northern harriers.

When it comes to harriers, nobody appreciates them like Pete.  Nobody captures them like Brenda Jones.

Ah, but no birds for us today.

I return to C.L. Rawlins to ‘drown my sorrow’ in his words and adventures.  “I climb and look around,” he reveals.  “It is enough.”

Writing of one of his “Snow Rangers,” Rawlins announces, “He craved the elemental rest of ice and storms.” Again, this writer I had not known, puts his finger right on what I’m missing this weekend — even beyond birds.  I am longing for the elemental…

Watching a so-called storm from inside modern glass windows just doesn’t do it.

“Up here,” exults Rawlins, “I am free to notice details.” That’s another piece of that for which I yearn — to be surrounded by those who notice details.  If I never hear “WHAT heron?” again, it’ll be too soon.

“In severe weather,” Rawlins lectures, “wilderness starts just outside your skin.  If you have good clothing [he means what we now call 'gear'], then that is your house, and it goes with you wherever you go.”

I love everything about eagle weekend, starting with packing my wind-pruf Polarfleece (copyright) and Gore-Tex (ditto), breatheable everything, and of course down.

“In deep cold,” (Rawlins again), “you must guard your heat, guard your water.”

He doesn’t say what I’ve been taught: to hydrate every half hour: “If you’re thirsty, it’s too late.”  “Hydration is more important in winter.”  “The first symptom of dehydration is fuzzy thinking.”  “In winter, fuzzy thinking kills.”  In summer, “Cotton kills.”  “Cotton - hypothermia-Central.”

As he back-country skis, Rawlins describes the landscape I have come to love along the Delaware Bayshore.  “Easy stuff comes hard out here.”

Exactly.  Every so often, more often than not, it’s essential to be OUT THERE.  Why?  Not only because it’s there.  Because it’s WILD there.  And to test ourselves against its thereness, find out if we’re up to it.  And, oh, yes, there may be eagles.

But here, despite ceaseless haranguing by Weather Channel’s adrenaline-junkies  — we had not a blizzard but a snowfall.

Blizzards blow relentlessly sideways for hours.

Blizzards destroy visibility.

Blizzards scream.

Blizzards have certain specific wind-speed, but I don’t even need number in order to know, we didn’t have one.

We had a snowfall.  Soft and lazy though lengthy.  By no means deep — five or six inches on my Canal Road hill.  Airy, ephemeral in the shoveling.

It wasn’t a disaster.  It was snow.  It was winter.  This is winter.  Get used to it.

Now, Millville, where I should be awake and writing bird words, is reported to have received 22 official inches.

Cape May, where I frankly YEARNED to be to watch the storm, had 100,000 people without power last night.

The Weather Channel pundit, bouncy and blonde, announced this statistic with foxy glee, adding the line I’ll never get over…  “Gee, I hope they get that turned around in time for the Super Bowl.”