Poor Will's Almanack: February 11 - 17, 2020

I write this from Sarasota, Florida: Complete semi-tropical habitat, no sign of winter. Looking back over today’s daybook from home in Ohio, I see how all the notes reach south, look forward. The notations from the cold, Midwestern years are fragments of longing as well as projections, reachings toward, visualizing, collecting pieces of the puzzle of spring, knowing that the completion is only a matter of distance or circumstance or decision, realizing that the details of February – such as cardinal song or the sighting of bluebirds or the gathering of geese or the appearance of snowdrop tips pushing through the mulch – are almost artificial constructs, a toying with promises and signs, the fulfillment of which already exists only a few hundred miles away. I am reminded of the time I was stationed at Fort Clayton in Panama half a century ago, a trip to Bogota, Colombia in the Andes surprised me with the change in altitude and temperature, showed me that the thick, moist air of the