A beautiful day for a walk 🚶🏾‍♀️

That's lovely! It didn't look like that here. It's approximately freezing (33F when I came in from outside), and it looked like this, with 5-10 inches of snow forecast over the next 24-36 hours, and possibly winds up to 50mph.



If we do get the ten inches of snow (or close) that photo will be the site of a quite vigorous 2+ hour workout tomorrow, to shovel myself out.

It was beautiful here yesterday, for January in Massachusetts. I did trail maintenance for 90 minutes. My intent was to not walk much, as I was breaking in new boots, and thanks to the bittersweet and multiflora rose, I only did 3/4 miles in that 90 minutes.

Today I worked on my compost pile.

Last snow we only got 3 inches, not enough to snow shoe

It's often a beautiful day to walk even if the weather doesn't look inviting at first glance. Sometimes it just takes the right clothes.

I woke up to frozen things. The freezing rain started overnight after it sleeted for a while. There may or may not have been snow. I mucked out the bird bath and put warm water in. I repeated that a few times during the day. I put the hummingbird feeder out at first light, and I kept swapping it out with another one as it started to freeze up. Poor little critters need the energy right now, especially with the long nights. I need to bring in the one that's out there now. I also had to get the ice out of the seed feeding station and add a little seed at a time and try to keep it ice free. The birds seemed quite happy to have access to food and water. I wonder how hard the suet gets when it's 20 or below.

This afternoon it got up to maybe 22 degrees. The freezing rain had paused, so I bundled up and went for a walk. Being bundled up and moving - I was pretty warm, except my face since I have been shaving this winter.

I got to see silly people doing silly things with their cars. I think some people are dumber than a box-o-rocks. A guy in a Jeep who isn't from my neighborhood (small neighborhood - I recognize all the cars) came by faster than appropriate, but whatever. The driver stopped and got out... in flip flops... and cleared ice off his windshield that a wise person might have removed before driving. Of he went again, couldn't decide to turn right or left, changed the signal a few times, then turned on the collector street, went a block, and pulled over again to clean off more ice. Other folks seemed to be doing the same thing. Down in the mostly empty parking lot in the park by the river, college kids in fairly fancy cars that I can only presume were bought for them were doing doughnuts. One clearly had gone through some deeper slush and partially tore off a fairing. Whatever.

It was a nice walk. I went down the river path because I figured it wouldn't be muddy. It wasn't. There was a layer of frozen on top except for some of the deepest mud puddles that had not frozen completely. On the walk down to the park and on the walk back, because there was both sleet AND freezing rain, there was a little bit of grip on the ice. It was still slick. I walked down past the disc golf course and actually saw one threesome playing. Maybe I should go play a round tomorrow. That might be fun. It's forecast to be a little warmer tomorrow - 26 degrees. I walked back past the 12th hole and along the bark path. Only one tree was down across the path. When I left the park, I walked through the cemetery, then out to the highway to see what local businesses were open and which were closed. I took a little back pathway home that normally isn't passable this time of year because of high water. There was some high water, but I was in Muck boots, and it wasn't THAT high. There was one other tree down that I had to climb around. There's a lot of poison oak down there, but this time of year it doesn't pump out much urushiol, and all the stems were covered with a layer of ice, so I wasn't too worried. Back across the field near my house, and back home for about 4.5 miles total.

About halfway, the freezing rain started again Since it was cold, I didn't wear a waterproof shell outside of my thermal layers. Because the outside of my coat was still below freezing, I was coated in a layer of rime when I got home. I wonder where I'll walk tomorrow. There's another route I might take, or I might go back. It would be beautiful to be paddling, but I don't think I'll do that.

I found the most unrealistic thing in the movie "The Thing" to be Kurt Russel's leather bomber jacket.



The trailer for "True Detective" Season 4 shows them dressed more appropriately, but apparently not enough, as they all complained of the cold. (Ski masks would have helped with that, but I suppose it's bad filmmaking to cover faces.)



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Detective_(season_4)

...The season was filmed in Iceland, with a reported budget of $60 million.[15][16] Filming began in November 2022, and wrapped in April 2023.[17][18] The conditions included nighttime shoots at −23 °C (−9 °F), which director López commented on by stating "I’m Mexican, so I’m really not fond of the cold". She continued by referring to how viewers found the environment authentic: "because we were there, because the actors were cold, because the filmmakers were cold."

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I enjoyed the gear in Fortitude, which was set in Arctic Norway.