Today walking around the lake, we had stopped, searching for the cause of raucous & ongoing avian alarm calls — by crows, mourning doves, others — when two women with their dogs asked what we were looking at; they told us that “sometimes there’s something really special” at the lake. We walked on, still looking skyward for the source of consternation, and within 100 yards spouse located the probable source up in a bare tree:

Quite a lovely, and deceptively tranquil-looking, red-tailed hawk. Special to see, and special to have it remain even after it knew we were watching.

But there were other special things today, too, like this mossy yard we’ve often admired:

And the mountain and lake view on a chilly early December day:

And this area around the brook that feeds the lake:

We also saw special red squirrels, grey squirrels, winterberry, rosehips, red-twig dogwood, some flowering dandelions!, rugged trees … and a lone loon still on the lake, which is 2/3 or 3/4 iced over (I wrote the NH Loon Preservation folks when we got home to let them know — loons need a good deal of open water to take off and land, and being iced-in would be a crisis); the loon photo is poor but we had binoculars and confirmed the ID.

I took this photo the day before of the ice:

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“We must open ourselves up to the density of the everyday world. Mindfulness does not need any special environment in order to happen. True, some surroundings can be more helpful or favourable, but mindfulness can come to us anywhere. As long as we make a little effort. As long as we remain awake and present.” — Christophe André  in  “Mindfulness: 25 ways to live in the moment through art”