Snow and other Gifts
Just so you know, I do have other things to write about.  I've been reading Wendell Berry, Charles Spurgeon , and a new writer I just discovered who is as deep and fresh as well, snow. With this eclectic group presently residing in my head, I am not at a loss for topics.
But they will have to wait for another day. I seem to be stuck, metaphorically and actually, in the snow.  Every phase of it-falling, sticking, melting, refreezing, drifting, sparkling- has had a mesmerizing quality to me.  I'd like to be blase about it, maybe complain about it a little, but I just can't.  And apparently I can't stop writing about it either. 
I have been trying to incorporate a little exercise into my daily trip to the barn.  Walking up and down the hill is always a bit of a challenge.  Walking in snow over my boots wearing heavy snow pants and a thick sweater has to qualify as actual exercise, so after chores I decided walk around the north end of the pasture to
check the fence and get in my 30 minutes. 
The fence is a mess. Hardly a fence at all, and it is on "the list" of things that have to be done "when the snow melts".  But I soon forget the sad state of the fence, lost in the maze of rabbit and deer tracks that cross through the pasture's edges.  Can we possibly have that many rabbits?  I notice that now in some places on south sloping hills, when I step I am actually pressing clean through to bare ground. The snow is melting.
The air is crystal clear and the sky is a surreal blue.  I stop, plop down in a snowbank in the pines and just breathe it in.  Tiny flakes of snow are falling out of the trees and sifting to the ground.  On the way down, the  sun is catching each one, turning them to diamonds.  Breathtaking. I am mesmerized again.
But I can't sit in the snow forever, and eventually I get up and for some reason it seems right that I should hike back up to the house via the north trail through the woods.  Crossing out of the fence I come into a little clearing that is still completely unmarked, no tracks of any kind.  It seems almost like desecration to cross it, but I must. Further on, more rabbit and deer tracks cross back and forth across the steep hill, smarter than I am--I am trying to go straight up it.  Along this north-facing trail through thick woods very little snow has melted.  As the treads of my boots fill with packed snow, I lose traction, slip, slide back, grab onto low limbs, pull myself along.  I make the last ten yards to the house on hands and knees, breathless.  This definitely qualifies as exercise. I reach the warmth of the house, shucking boots and snow pants in the mud room, enjoying a sense of accomplishment.  It was good to be out among the snow and sun and pines.