The last few weeks have shown how dangerous believing in fairy tales can be. Not seeing what is real, not accepting it, will lead you far astray. There are many fairy tales about how this wonderful universe came to be. They have their charms, and can soothe. But the truth is still unknown, which makes it more mysterious.

I wonder who appreciates nature more. Those who believe in these creation myths, or those who accept that it has been a long, laborious, excruciatingly difficult trial and error experiment, and that for something as lovely as a swan to exist, took millions upon millions upon millions of years. I am inclined to think that those who realize how much time it took, and how conditions had to be perfectly right, for something as lovely as a swan to exist, appreciate nature more than those who believe in fairy tales of mythical beings waving a magic wand and bringing everything into existence. If it happened that way once, it really doesn’t matter if we destroy it. Some being will just wave a wand and recreate it all.

But when you realize all the steps it took for something as lovely as a swan to fly overhead, and how there are no other places within billions and billions of miles from us where you can watch such magnificent birds glide over you, then you realize how precious they are. What a gift they are, and how horrific it would be to cause them all the vanish.

On Saturday the sun looked like the moon through the clouds. It’s been a very mild winter so far. Some years, the pond is frozen fast this time of year. Not this year. There is still the rest of January and February to go through, so who knows, a cold snap could still bring about a blanket of soft, powdery snow, and hard ice sealing the pond.

How all of us living beings are made is remarkable. And all the instructions for making something as complex as us, exists in every cell in our body, some 30 trillion cells, 30 trillion copies of our blueprint, in our body. It boggles the mind. And it’s not a fairy tale. It takes over 3 billion base pairs to describe our entire genome. If you would write it down and try to read it all, well good luck reading all that. And yet we have trillions of copies of those instructions in us. When you investigate how things are, you come up with explanations that are far more interesting and marvelous than fairy tales.

This morning’s sky was on fire. It turned the pond into a vermillion pool. What did the ducks think of it? They have very good color vision. Were they dazzled by the brilliant hue on the pond?

Who knows. They seemed more interested in breakfast than the burning sky.

I saw a clear sign of spring. Daffodils shooting out of the ground. I don’t know how they do it, but each year they sneak up on me. I never catch them just breaking the surface. By the time I see their shoots, they’re lifting their flower buds high above their shoulders. They are very sneaky flowers.

It is still winter? That’s a question you could have asked a few days ago. It’s hard to believe that just a few days ago the sky was this blue. It almost looks like a summer day.

Fog rolled inland off the bay, past the Chuckanuts, over Bow Hill, and far up the Samish River Valley.

Fresh snow on Lyman Hill hinted that it is still winter. Today’s heavy rain reminds me that it is still mid January.

Between the steady rains, the sun almost crawls through the winter skies. Almost, but not quite. Bright, golden spells of glimmering gold light appear for a few minutes before the next band of rain rolls in.

This time of year, the clouds hug the mountains more than not. Some days the clouds reach the ground and hug me. If you don’t mind getting wet, it’s a playful time of year. Clouds are always nearby to play silly games with you.

When I was a child, I was told that this was all made in just 6 days. It is much more satisfying to know that it has taken over 4 billion years for this earthly paradise to create this extraordinary, incredible, magical special place for me and you. There is nothing like this paradise we live in for billions and billions of miles around. When you know it’s taken that long for these forests, mountains, and clouds which bring so much joy to become the way they are now, you want to take much more care of it. I don’t want to have to start over from scratch and wait another 4 billion years for this paradise to be made again. Do you?

It’s a guess where the snow geese will be when we run an errand or return home. When we meet someone new, we often hear about where their parents came from, and where their parent’s parents came from, and back into history. I was heart broken when I learned that a great great grandfather of mine up and left his beautiful farm in Switzerland. I visited that farm once and could not imagine how anyone in their right mind could abandon such a place.

That great great grandfather was not right of mind. His reason for fleeing paradise? A tavern opened about a mile from his farm. He was not about to raise children with drinking and dancing so close to home. If I had a great great grandfather who loved beer and dancing, I could be farming in the Jura mountains and trekking into Bern, Switzerland, from time to time.

But what about the snow geese? Is that what they talk about? “My mother and father met when their flocks crossed paths over Vancouver Island?” or whatever name snow geese have for Vancouver Island.

Probably not. But you never know. We may belittle them for their little brains, but those little brains maneuver their bodies more skillfully than jet liners, and steer them on epic journeys from the Arctic to here and back, all without the need for massive infrastructure and support staff.

While trimming a barberry bush, I discovered a nest up in the upper branches. A barberry bush with its needle thorns is a safe place for a little bird to nest. No cat or snake would attempt to climb a barberry. Its thorns make a rose thorn feel as soft as a feather. I think you could accomplish delicate brain surgery with barberry thorns.

Trim a barberry, and it glares back at you, neon yellow. “Step any closer and you die!” the barberry screams.

So what little bird raised a brood in this little nest? What little bird flew south and is now telling a potential mate, “I grew up in a thorny barberry bush. Where did you grow up?”