I’m inspired. I just finished my first walk of the year around the Westwood Hills Nature Center. It has been a gorgeously beautiful day. This nature center is maybe a half mile east of my office; at least that’s how far it is if I go to a back door I’ve found. It might be more like a mile and a half if I drive all the way to the main gate. Weather and time permitting, I try to make a point of walking there every day. Obviously, weather and time don’t always permit – such as during the unusually long winter we just finished. I suppose I could have gone in there during the past winter with my cross country skis, but I never did.
A couple of eagles were circling over the lake this afternoon. At first I thought maybe they were hawks; but then I saw some hawks – they were there too – and concluded that the eagles were really eagles. Hawks look quite a bit different. The ice is still on the lake, except for a little bit of open water around the edges. I watched a poor mallard try to come in for a landing on a small patch of open water, only to find that it was only about two inches deep. He made a bit of a splash, and then seemed surprised to be standing on his feet after coming to an to an abrupt stop. I could swear that he looked at me with an embarrassed expression, but that had to be my imagination.
The City of St. Louis Park does an excellent job of maintaining the hiking trails. Today there were some patches of snow and some muddy spots. There were spots where streams of water from the melting snow were flowing across the trail. And yes even this early in the year, there were parts of the trail where one had to be very careful to not step in what the geese had left behind.
