Dec 23 2010
Snowy Woods
A week ago I went for a walk in the woods a few hours after a winter storm had ended. About four inches of the white stuff had fallen and some of it was still clinging to the trees. A bright sun blazed through a mostly blue sky at midday. I trudged along, kicking up snow with each step as my dog Matika leaped joyously through the virgin powder. All the while the wild shouted a deafening silence.
A barred owl swept through the woods, hooting once it had landed somewhere out of sight. Then a crow. Then a chickadee. Otherwise Matika and I had the woods all to ourselves. She fell upon a set of squirrel tracks, but the squirrel was long gone. I brushed the snow off a downed tree then sat down for a while to groove on my surroundings. With not a wisp of wind blowing, the woods remained absolutely still.
As anyone who has read my blogs knows, I am not a big fan of winter. But this was one of those outings that gave some credence to the myth perpetuated by ski resort marketing departments and 20th Century poets like Robert Frost. You know what I’m talking about: a winter wonderland and all that. Well, on rare occasion New England actually lives up to the advertisement, and even a summer-loving guy like me can’t help but enjoy the dazzling beauty of a brown and white landscape on a sunny day. In the icy, gray hills of central Ohio where I grew up, there was no such thing.
Since then, another winter storm has come and gone dropping even more snow. Today I spent a good deal of time shoveling it. Tomorrow probably I’ll do the same, after a big sheet of it avalanches off my roof. I could complain about my aching back, etc. but I think I’ll give it a rest. Instead I’ll stand in my driveway after dusk, admiring the way that freshly fallen snow brightens the landscape even in darkness, and count being a Vermonter among my blessings. In this part of the world, I don’t have to dream of a white Christmas. It’s practically guaranteed.
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