Stirred AND Shaken

I have to pause here and just show you these images of the little jewel of a pond I go to every day.It's tucked in the corner of a nice old city once known for its tanneries and its fruit trees, its pastures and its dooryards. Even just 40 years ago you could still feel the presence of the farm families and the mill folk who lived here.The island you see across the soon to be icy waters once had a pavilion on it where an orchestra would set up of a summer night for dancing under the stars. The ladies and gents  would step in their evening slippers into launches that carried them across to it. Today there isn’t a structure upon this island , but only the walking trails and the tenacious oaks so slow to relinquish their fawn-colored leaves. If you dug a couple of feet under the topsoil, I imagine you would also find the implements of the people who first settled hereabouts some 60,000 years ago, having walked across the land bridge that is now the Bering Straits.You have to know that I'll never run out of things to say about our natural endowment as describers and storytellers - what I promised to do  but I will wait to say more about that topic from yesterday. How can I not use today to show you these images?Of open waters on the brink of freezing?Of gulls struggling to fly in a 30 mile an hour wind?Of the way the water looks right at shore’s edge where the ice is starting to form in earnest?I watched it chuckling and churning as those strong winds dragged the new ice this way and that. It made me feel wonderful, as though I were inside tall silver cocktail shaker, both shaken and stirred!See how it makes you feel when you press 'Play'.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEIU3Ne552U&feature=youtu.be]