A New Day

New Year's Eve has rarely been a cause of great celebration for me as an adult, however, I felt differently when I was young. I grew up on a suburban street full of families and lots of kids. New Year's Eve usually found one house on the street hosting an adult party, while the older kids gathered at another enjoying juvenile humor and company, as well as the privilege of staying up late with minimal supervision. My first real career after college was in hotel management and this is where the holiday lost its luster for me. Most of the places I worked offered inexpensive package deals, and the night was usually very busy for us. Sometimes there were public parties in ballrooms, but there were always many private celebrations we had little control over, and at both, great quantities of alcohol were consumed. Consequently I had to work every New Year's Eve trying to keep a lid on things, making sure the guests, as well as the hotel were kept safe, and we were lucky if we only had a few belligerent confrontations. The next morning was no day of rest. New Year's Day was spent trying to herd slow moving people out the doors so we could clean up after them, and I am here to tell you - people do things in hotels they don't do at home. I don't miss this part of my former life in the least.

I have never shared the inclination some revelers have to quickly push the old year out the door like a bad house guest, while pinning so many hopes on the New Year, as if the simple flip of a calender page will change our lives. If you have unresolved issues in your life, they do not disappear on New Year's Day. Perhaps the best use of this time of year is to reflect on what brought us to this point, are there changes we would like to make and where would we like to go. I myself will be marking half a century in the coming year, and at this point in my life I am not anxious to see the calender flip any faster than it has to. For me I find it much more enjoyable to celebrate the new day and not so much the New Year. Now let me get down from behind this pulpit.

This past Sunday was a cause for celebration. It was the first day in at least two weeks that it was either not raining, overcast or unusually cold, and the day found me fortunate to be on Virginia's beautiful Eastern Shore. There was a light fog in the morning that quickly burned off, followed by bright sunshine, no chilling winds and with temperatures in the mid 50's. All of the following pictures were taken on the shore of Metompkin Bay in Accomac Co. This blog has been here several times, but the blogger never gets tired of visiting.

There have been several tides well above normal this fall, and they have washed over the nearby land leaving behind many things including this purple seaweed that was nearly everywhere.

I was not the only one celebrating the new day. According to my father (whose birthday just happens to be New Year's Day) these ducks are probably Mergansers and they were enjoying the calm water as they fished for breakfast.

Calm skies were celebrated by a different group of birds. These are just a small portion of the hundreds of Snow Geese that were overhead Sunday morning. Snow Geese summer in the Artic, and are only winter visitors to the Eastern Shore, spending their days on the barrier islands, or gleening through the recently harvested fields for leftovers. I just wish I knew what message they were trying to spell in the sky.

Whether you are a rowdy reveller, or given to comtemplative introspection, or if it just another new day to you - I wish you all the best this New Year's Day.
(If you would like to see the rest of the photos in this series, you can do so on my Flickr page.)