The weak December sun filters through the woods, casting long shadows. Less than a week and the shadows will shorten, the sun rays strengthen, and the chickens will get up earlier.

Even though Swans have an affinity for muddy fields, they somehow manage to keep their feathers snow white. Do the grey young ones impatiently wait for their feathers to become white like their parents’ feathers. With their heads so far from the rest of their bodies, I wonder what sort of out-of-body experiences swans have. In a way, they’re always looking down and seeing their bodies a long way off.

One of these years, and I will probably live to see it, the swans will return to find their wintering fields under the water of the Sammish sea. These muddy fields on Fir Island have but a few decades left before they are at the bottom of the encroaching bay.

The news today is that no agreement on reducing CO2 emissions could be made at the COP25 meetings in Madrid. Those making money on burning fossil fuels refuse to let any progress be made. The world has a strange economic system. Those getting wealthy are more addicted to their wealth than they are to the survival of their offspring. They’d rather let the seas rise and flood the homes of hundreds of millions, destroy cities, and let all of us suffer the consequences of a planet warming too fast for us and all other life to adjust. Future generations will never forgive them. They will be saying things much worse than, “OK, Boomer.”

Buttercup has gone back to laying eggs after rearing her chicks. And I’m beginning to find Welsummer eggs. The Welsummer chicks I got at the end of spring are starting to lay. New Welsummer eggs are a great way to end the year.