I hadn’t planned on revisiting Art Hill quite so soon (I like to spread my days out evenly over the park), but Rebecca and her friend Lou wanted to go sledding, so I decided to join the fun. This was Lou’s first time sledding - they don’t get much snow in Liberia - and any snow day brings sledding action there. I had to park on Government Drive, across from the World’s Fair Pavilion as Fine Art Drive was packed. I noticed, after I dropped the girls at the top of the hill next to Louis the King, that the rangers were out in force, writing tickets for all the illegally parked cars, and there were a lot of them; today must have been a very good revenue day! Remember, folks, just because the yellow curb is covered with snow does not mean you may park there.
My walk to Art Hill did offer me a chance to see some birds, though. I managed to catch a Brown Creeper circling a tree, an unidentified sparrow flitting through tall grasses on Wildlife Island and a Dark Eyed Junko creeping through the brush by the water. Meanwhile, on Art Hill, hundreds of people from all over were flying down the icy slope and crashing into the hay bales at the bottom. There were fires in the fire rings at the top of the hill to warm the sledders (and maybe give away our position to unfriendly alien civilizations), but the surest way to warm up is to run back up the hill after narrowly escaping death on the way down.
A sparrow by the water’s edge
I met quite a number of people there, including a number of other photographers out to document one of St. Louis’ good times. I got into a conversation with Kevin and Lucy, a couple I met at the bottom of the hill by the grand basin as we were contemplating the happy scene. I thought it looked like a Pieter Brueghel painting, though the image I had in my mind was by Hendrick Avercamp, a contemporary of Pieter Brueghel the Younger, son of the trend-setting early 16th century painter.
Pieter Brueghel would totally have painted this scene