Winterthur stays open in January and February this year

Around 3 o'clock today, I went for a hike at Winterthur and one thing jumped out at me--the long shadows. We are not long past the Winter Solstice, so the shadows are going to be getting shorter eventually.

But the sun was bright, and it felt a lot warmer than the low 40's. There is a find Waldo in my first picture, but frankly, I couldn't find it after I looked at the picture. It's usually pretty quiet out there in the woods, but shortly after I started my hike, a hawk swooped down, a squirrel went chattering up a tree on the left, and the hawk perched in the tree on the right. The hawk sat motionless, while the giddy squirrel scampered in circles on the tree trunk, noisily protesting his near miss. Probably not a good idea to make that much noise, but what do I know?  Another noisy place was near the pond, where honking geese broadcast their voices across the valley. And a quiet place was the quarry garden, where I became a mere shadow.