Off-season. Winter in western New York. What’s there to do?
*Quite a lot, actually, as long as you don’t mind being low-key – which is sort of what winter is anyway.
*Take a walk in a summer activity space, such as a fairground. See how it’s different… in fact, almost new. It will be quiet. You’ll likely have the place to yourself. Memories will surface, but distances will seem askew. You may notice features you’ve never seen before. Try taking pictures. I once got some very good shots of the snowbound fireman’s fair field in Hammondsport.
*Wander the waterfront. The marina space in Watkins Glen or Canandaigua is a new world off-season. Stroll up and down the docks (assuming they’re ice-free!) and remember what the place was like at the height of summer. Look out for overwintering waterfowl. From Hammondsport waterfront you almost always sees rafts of coots, gulls, and mallards.
*Try out a park. Some are no doubt closed, especially those out in rural areas. But pick your way through the in-town parks of Hammondsport, Bath, Elmira, Corning. What are the fountains like with the water turned off? What trees are slumbering in the parks, and when will they waken?
*Along those lines, we once visited Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge in the dead of winter. We had the place to ourselves, just as though it were our personal game preserve. We could stop whenever and wherever we liked without worrying about backing up traffic, and take all the time we wanted with binoculars gazing across the flats.
*Of course, you can have off-season fun right in your kitchen or living room, if you put out a bird feeder. The bears are still asleep, but by Easter or so we’ll have to take the feeders in, unless we live right in the heart of town. On a daily basis we get red-headed woodpeckers, downy woodpeckers, juncos, goldfinches, white-breasted nuthatches, black-capped chickadees. Out cat likes to watch as much as we do.
*Take an urban or village walk, assuming the sidewalks are clear. Steuben County Historical Society has walking-tour brochures for Bath. Some of our towns have heart-health walking routes.
*Twice in the past month I’ve been out walking on the Keuka Outlet Trail, at the Penn Yan end. In January we saw a bluebird… not our typical winter fare! We also inspected some recent beaver work, and glimpsed a muskrat in the offing.
*On my February trip I enjoyed just getting to know the Outlet area in the quiet and sleep of late winter. Much of the Outlet was frozen, at least until you crossed the footbridge downstream from Main Street, where mallards were huddled, just as they had been a few weeks earlier. Seeing the industrial buildings from beneath at this time of year makes you feel as though you possess arcane knowledge, vouchsafed to only a few.
*Besides heading downstream, I also crossed the hump-backed bridge over the Outlet and passed through the little park, then followed the trail a few hundred yards to its eastern terminus. Along the way I stopped at another bridge, under the trees, to watch the stream picking its way through the ice.
*And I came to he baseball field. Empty, deserted, and covered with snow, looking a little dilapidated, as all such places do at this time of year. But promising warmer days, and happy crowds, and summer sun. Back at the feeder, the goldfinches are starting to show their summer glow. “We are nearer to spring than we were in September.”