Welcome to My Winter World of White and Gold

Of course, the beautiful, mild, sunny weather we had on Wednesday came to an end. It rained all day on Thursday, with freezing rain, ice, and snow in the forecast for Friday. When I went out for my walk, conditions were . . . well, let's just say they were poor.

The rain on top of ice made the ice slick again; slicker, in fact, than you might believe possible until you experienced it yourself. And on the side roads, as the morning temperature hovered just around freezing, there were many icy patches. As the snow melted under the rain, the fog rose up, turning everything into a wonderland of mist.

I went out for my walk around 8:30 in the morning, with camera, tunes box, and umbrella. I walked up and down a couple of side roads where I examined conditions, determined them to be unsafe, and backed down. I took little steps, but I kept on walking.

This is a view of one of the fields back in behind our house. It looked like a winter world of white and gold. It made me think of the moors, though probably the moors look nothing at all like this! With Heathcliff and Cathy and their tale of thwarted love. . . .

As I was returning to our house, I came across a sad find: a rabbit that had been hit on the road, lying on the berm, about halfway between our house and the neighbors' house. (Okay, here she goes with the dead animals again.)

Now, my husband is a rabbit lover, and he is constantly feeding the rabbits in our yard. There is a little tray of food he prepares each evening, that he puts under the hedge where the rabbit will find it. In the morning, the food is usually gone, but he does not ever know for sure that it is the rabbit that is getting it.

Anyway, I was trying to decide whether to even TELL him about the sad bunny demise, because I knew it would upset him. And then I thought - well, I photograph everything else. I might as well photograph this poor bunny.

And so I pulled out my camera (Canon Powershot SX60 HS), and took off the lens cap. And there is a sort of a hood just above the extendable lens that has been loose ever since my cousin gave me this camera. Well, as I whipped out the camera and pointed it, Pling! went the lens hood as it fell off, and then Thunk! as it landed in the soaking wet snow right beside the dead rabbit.

Well, you can bet THAT took me aback. I simply picked up the part and stuck it (now covered in snow and wet, and WAY too close to dead creature cooties for my comfort) into my coat pocket, closed up the camera, and went into the house. In the end, I DID tell my husband about the bunny, though I did not show him the photo; he sighed sadly and said, "Well, if it was our rabbit, at least it got a decent supper the night before it died."

As for me, I do not think it is a good sign for the camera that a part of it has fallen off. I wiped off the fallen piece with hand sanitizer and put it and the camera in a bedroom and let it all dry off. When it was dry, I put the part back on, and it works fine, but now I will need to be more careful when handling the camera, so as not to let it fall off again. This may mean holding the camera with BOTH hands.

There is a back-story to this. I have owned THREE Canon Powershot super-zoom cameras, the 40, the 50, and the 60. The 40 began to have a serious lens squeal after several years of use, but still works. The 50 just quit on me one day (stories here and here).

The 60, I've used heavily, and IT started making the lens-squealing noise a few months ago. When I made frozen bubbles the first time this winter, it had difficulty focusing for a while. And that day I went to Way Fruit Farm, it gave me a lens error. Then for a few days, when I'd first turn it on in a day, it would extend a tiny bit and then shut off. These are NOT good signs.

So on January 12, I swapped my own SX 60 out for the SX 60 my cousin Lana gave me a few summers back; hers is the one that the part fell off of. So I'm sensing that both of the 60's I own now are probably not going to last forever. But they are great cameras and I don't WANT to upgrade (to a newer version of this camera that requires a completely different battery!); I am committed to using mine until they give up the ghost!

All of my cameras have seen heavy wear, as I am out with them in all kinds of conditions. I am out in rain, snow, sleet, you name it. As far as what volume of use they have experienced, I just finished putting to bed my photo library for 2020 and 2021, and in it were 17,650 photos I took in 2020, and 25,000 in 2021. Yes, that is heavy wear! As Spock might say, here is my wish for my two SX 60's: Live long, and prosper!  :-)

I was waffling on two songs for this photo, so I will punt, and use them both! One is Dan Fogelberg and Tim Weisberg, with The Power of Gold. The second is for Heathcliff and Cathy on the moors: Kate Bush, with Wuthering Heights; here's another version by Pat Benatar.