Field Notes: Winter 2024/2025

The taste of snow

I scoop a handful of fresh snow and hold it in my mouth.
A second scoop,
and a third,
a fourth.

I taste
snow angels
and laughter, toboggans and ice ponds
wet gloves and cold fingers
snow days and shovels and cleats
snow pants and dogs

I taste
shades of white and quiet
quilt-stitch animal tracks
and dark tree branches against a pearl sky

The luminous middle

Our walk began in rain and ended in sunshine. But the middle — in the middle, thousands of raindrops shimmered on wet branches. Each essential to the whole.

Oh to be such a light in a shining constellation.

Old question, new answer

“Is this the right way?” Cora asks as she turns left.

Cora, Sarah, their dog Bean, Asha and I had been walking along a narrow winding path, then ventured off, over a stone wall and onto a wider trail.

This question and I have become well acquainted through the many versions I’ve asked myself over the years.

These woods have taught me a more expansive answer:

“It is a way.”

Breadcrumbs

“Shall we go this way?” I ask Asha at an intersection and walk several yards along the trail to demonstrate my question. To my surprise and delight, she agrees.

Most of this snowy trail is not well packed by walkers, skiers, cyclists or snowmobilers, so I trudge through four inches of slushiness, pausing frequently to catch my breath, and envy Asha, who runs ahead, sniffing animal tracks.

Familiar landmarks along the way are obscured by snow and ice and the cars sound louder, making the highway seem closer than usual, so I stop to get my bearings, to confirm that I am where I think I am.

I look left, the direction I plan to walk, and see a dotted line of beech leaves nestled in tracks. “Look, Asha,” I call. “The wind and woods have left us breadcrumbs.”

Ice-crusted snow

“Hold on a sec,” I call to Asha. “I need to catch my breath.”

Pausing in the quiet, my heartbeat slowing, I hear how the sound and the exertion of my boots punching through the ice-crusted snow gave voice to and released some of my anger.

“Thanks for waiting,” I say. “I’m ready for more.”

Untitled (after reading Atticus)

Keep your long days of summer
give me
the embrace of fog
an invisible drizzle
the fragrance of thawed earth
a Red-winged Blackbird singing his return
– and I will declare it a perfect morning
for a late-winter walk.