Will it be a Hard Winter?

For several months now we’ve been reading through the Little House on the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder. We absolutely LOVE these books! Recently they have opened up an interesting topic of conversation at our house. The story goes like this:

In the book, “The Long Winter,” an Indian comes to De Smet (I almost said Walnut Grove!) and predicts the hard winter ahead. He does so based on a pattern he had seen during his long life - that every 7th winter is a hard winter, but every third 7th winter, or 21st winter, is the hardest of all. And that winter coming was a 21st winter.

And it was hard. He was right.

There were a bunch of other signs that Pa observed during the fall months that alerted him to the hard winter to come. The muskrats built their homes larger and thicker than he’d ever seen. The birds did not stop to rest and eat like they normally did...they just flew high and fast toward the south. Things like that.

So we’ve been discussing whether or not the 21st winter thing is still legit, and how do we know when the 21st winter is coming?

And maybe we’re just paranoid, but now we’ve been noticing some weird things happening as fall sets in and this area gets ready for winter.

I {love} blue jays! They are so brilliant! Excuse the sleeve reflection, lol!

The birds. They are congregating. Which is normal for the robins, geese, etc...but even the blue jays have banded together. And blue jays don’t fly south. Who has ever seen a huge flock of blue jays before?

Something is digging up our lawn. We’re debating weather it is skunks or raccoons. (We have both aplenty around here!) But it’s not just our lawn, it is lawns all over Nova Scotia… all our neighbors are sporting the same dirt patches we are. And everyone says how they’ve never seen anything like it before. Why are the skunks/raccoons so hungry all of a sudden?

And then we had that weird mink that was doing everything possible to find food and shelter a few weeks back.

Coincidence? Oh probably! And you might just call me crazy after this post...but I thought it would be fun to type this out and then see what happens! What if it does turn out to be a crazy winter?

So humor me for a bit...will it be a hard winter? Can we look to wildlife and nature to help us predict the seasons? Do you think the 21st winter theory still holds true?


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