As Twenty Ten Begins

Alison and I returned yesterday, the last day of 2009, from our fourth wedding trip to Mackinac Island. Though we've been married only three years, already this trip has the feel of a long-standing tradition. When we saw the mayor of the island, who married us, at an art exhibit in the library, she asked, "How many now?" The temperature this year was quite mild, so while I walked and Alison ran round the island, the winds were not nearly as cutting as they were last year, when the lake was frozen and the ferry had to bang and shudder its way through the thick ice. In addition to the swans, I saw numerous small flocks of small black-and-white ducks during the crossing; they were either buffleheads or golden eyes.

As this new year begins, Alison is ending her hiatus from long runs. She hasn't run long since pacing a runner through the final thirty miles at the Vermont One Hundred in July. She's out now on an eight-miler in the Bundy Hill region a few miles north of us. In February, she will fly to Houston to run a half marathon in Austin with daughter Jenny, and possibly brother Kevin. Yesterday evening, she signed up for the Grand Island Marathon in early August. We'll turn that into a backpacking trip as well. And I'm sure she'll find a few other marathons to run this year as well. She still dreams of a fifty-miler, and maybe she'll do it some day, but the training necessary for such distance would take her away from much better pastimes now possible since the new tub is now in place.

This has been a fine winter break, and now we lament that it is ending. Alison returns to work Monday, and my classes begin a week later. In the meantime, I'm checking through and revising the manuscript of my edition of Audubon's Journal of 1826. I have the first of the two readers' reports, but won't have the other one for a couple of weeks yet. So long as the second reader throws up no obstacles, I'll be able to re-submit the whole thing to my editor at Nebraska by the end of this month, and he will take it to the Board at its March meeting. Because I'm impatient, and because of the possible "competiton" with the Field Museum, I had hoped for publication before the end of 2010, but I do understand the reasons for its not being published until the spring of 2011 (during which time, having endured two more birthdays, I will officially become an aging scholar).

This winter has been easy on us so far, and as we re-enter the world whence come our pay checks, we will also keep an eye on the progress of the season around us. I went out earlier today and found a snow-crowned bird's nest, a face in a stump, a puzzle of tiny tracks on a cedar trunk, and enough other sights to keep a pert doe curious.