Mr. Unwanted Winter stuck his cold nose in here where it's unwelcomed and has been blowing it hard for a couple of days, hard enough for tumbleweeds to start bouncing across fields, over roads, and hanging up on fence lines.
Driving across the Missouri River yesterday in the late afternoon, I watched a line of squalls drift over the valley. They travelled quickly and swallowed me, each one shrinking my world to a small, white dome.
Squalls always remind me of the March lambing season on the farm. It seemed that squalls and new-born lambs appeared together, and it was important that the lamb be gotten up fast to suck the mother ewe's teat and gain strength.
As I drove along I wondered about the derivation of that word squall. At home my dictionary told me it came from the Swedish sqval. That reminded me of another word from the Old Norse - window, meaning wind eye. So there was I, this old Scandinavian, watching the squalls through my window.
