An overnight snowstorm thwarted travel plans.

 

By 11 a.m. the sky showed signs of clearing.

 

An hour later the clouds boiled up over the hill

and down came the snow!

The birds, however, are not fooled. Today I saw a flock of fat, orange-breasted robins, their feathers fluffed against the cold. The winter birds - the juncos and nuthatches and chickadees - chirped from the feeders but the robins picked frantically at a bit of exposed ground, looking for something more substantial than seeds. Not finding anything, they lifted and flew awkwardly into the wind.

I thought of them often during the day, wondering what drove them to come back before the snows of March had melted, before the ground released sleepy worms, before bugs swarmed and grubs hatched. What drives any of us to go forward before conditions are favorable? Partly it’s genetic inheritance, and in the case of birds, factors such as food supply and a safe place to nest. Come to think of it, that applies to humans, too. We can’t always explain our own journeyings. We respond to some inner urging that makes us flee safety and head into the perilous unknown.

We all come to times in our lives when we have to make some small obeisance to bravery. We face a loss or a challenge and off we go into the unknown with our thimbleful of faith, trusting that whatever we believe in will sustain us along the way.

I cannot know what those robins were thinking as they hurried north into unexpected snow and ice, or what survival plans they made as they shivered together at the edge of the meadow. I hope they find sustenance in some sheltered part of the woods, that food and a place to sleep are close at hand. For my part, I will look for them again tomorrow. I have cleared a space beneath a large pine, a place where the snow was already beginning to melt. Perhaps they will find food there among the rotted leaves and the twining roots. Perhaps, unwittingly, I am a contributor to their thimbleful of faith.