Back Before 6

Back Before 6

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No time to walk yesterday until almost nightfall., but it’s light enough now that I could leave my house at 5:30, stroll through the gloaming, and be back before 6 without walking in the dark. A good reminder that spring is on its way, even though the groundhog saw his shadow.

At this point in the season 6 p.m. is still a hard stop. With no shoulders due to snow boulders, and no sidewalks or street lights, it’s better to be safely inside by this hour. But that I could amble abroad at all after 5 was a surprise and a delight.

It’s such a pleasant time to wander, yellow porch lights beacons of warmth in a frozen landscape. I saw a single doe jump from the snowy woods over the road, her white tail flashing.

False Dawn

False Dawn

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It’s early still, but when I woke it seemed light enough to be morning. Now that I’m upright and at my desk, I see that darkness prevails. The snow pack must be fooling me, must be brightening the landscape, creating a false dawn.

I think of how hard insomniacs look for some semblance of morning, how they analyze blinds and shades for shifts in hue. They have waited hours for just a glimmer of the day to come.

Luckily, that was not my case, at least not last night. It’s more that the light woke me, revved me, jump-started my day. It may have been a false dawn I glimpsed, but the real one will be here soon.

Snowcrete

Snowcrete

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Snowmageddon, Snowzilla and now … snowcrete. The differences in capitalization are intentional. Snowmageddon and Snowzilla were snowstorms, but snowcrete is the oh-so-clever name given to the stuff we’ve been shoveling for more than a week.

It’s a new word, as far as I know, and it perfectly expresses the combination of snow and concrete that last week’s storm left behind. Ask anyone who’s been shoveling it. Their arms, shoulders and back testify to the fact that this is no ordinary substance. It is, or ought to be, an entirely new element.

In the last few days I’ve gotten out more and seen first-hand the devastation this stuff has wrought. A parking lot piled high with snow boulders. Two-lane roads turned into one-lane roads. Bobcats brought in to “shovel” a driveway.

Is it snow? Ice? Sleet? None of the above. It’s snowcrete.

Mom’s Day

Mom’s Day

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I usually cede the blog to Mom on this day, search among her papers and writings, find the words, type them here. But today is a milestone birthday: Mom would have been 100 today.

She always deplored February 1 — the cold, the snow. At least once in my lifetime she spent the day entirely alone because she was snowed in. We were grown and out of the house, and Dad was away.

Today I wake to severe weather advisories, single-digit wind chills, a February 1 that proves everything Mom ever said about it.

But to me, February 1 was always special. No snow, ice or gloom could erase the fact that this is the day my mother came into this world. And no polar vortex will spoil it today.

Young Fox

Young Fox

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The young fox skitters across the yard, angling along the diagonal path that his family has followed for years. He slips between pickets as if they weren’t there. Proof that our yard is a passageway, a corridor between woods and meadow.

How do I know he’s a juvenile? His long, coltish legs give him away. That and his antic energy.

Two weeks ago, I saw two kits in the yard, leaping and playing. Two days ago one of them was limping. These are harsh days for injured animals.

I tell myself he had a clump of ice embedded in his paw, that it melted and he is fine. That he is the very fox I just saw galloping atop the ice-crusted snow.

(Wrong season, wrong fox. This is one of the few fox photos I have on hand. I haven’t snapped a shot of the little guy)

Big Business

Big Business

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Emerging into the world beyond home and street this morning, I caught an exercise class, bought some groceries and browsed in a bookstore. I spent most of my time in the blank book section, which seemed inordinately large. I’ve been depleting my stockpile of blank books lately and was amused to see how many choices await modern-day diarists.

There were hardbacks and soft covers, lined and unlined (precious few of the latter, I’m sorry to say, because I like them best). There were journals made in Britain, France, Japan, Germany, the U.S. and Italy. Books bound in leather, jute, canvas or vegan suede.

I saw diaries for readers, travelers and cat-lovers. Plenty for cat lovers, as a matter of fact, while I saw not a single blank book with dogs on the cover.

Not sure what to deduce from that oversight, but in general I’d say that journals are a big business. All of which bodes well for the ink-on-paper trade, which I proudly support.

Shoveling Plates

Shoveling Plates

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I’m just in from a shoveling session. Having spent Sunday and Monday in a snow-induced, soup-making fog, I woke up Tuesday to a weather report that showed single-digit lows the rest of the week. This frozen world won’t be thawing anytime soon. It was time to join the shoveling crew.

I started with the snow shovel and quickly realized that using it alone was like raking leaves with a fork. A regular shovel was required, a tool with a sharp edge that could chip away at the several inches of frozen stuff on top of the fluffier white precipitation underneath.

The funny thing about this top layer, though, is how I finally removed it. I used my shovel as a fulcrum and pried it up. Chunks loosened and cracked, like tectonic plates. I tried to use my best form as I crouched low to pick up each ice floe and toss it into the yard.

In this way, ever-so-slowly, the dark macadam began to emerge. Expose enough of it and there’s traction.

(From a long-ago, fluffier snow. The car’s the same, though.)

Winter Shade

Winter Shade

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Just because we don’t look for it on these frigid days doesn’t mean it isn’t there. I noticed winter shade on my last walk around Lake Anne. A filigree of darkness in the light. A refuge from glare.

The deciduous trees don’t produce it. They cast a sharp shadow but offer no place to hide. But the hollies and magnolias still make it, the pines and arborvitae, too.

In wintertime, my eye is trained to look for shadows, long and lean, but there is shade, too, a place of safety, even in the cold.

Cold and White

Cold and White

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The snow is no longer a rumor; it’s a reality. It’s also buried under the sleet that fell on top of it, pelting it, falling and falling and falling some more. A day’s worth of sleet atop a night’s worth of snow.

Here from my office window I see a world that is cold and white. Not as cold as it will be tomorrow, when we’ll wake up to 3 degrees or some other single digit. Or even as cold as will be later today, when the winds pick up. But cold enough to keep the world white for the next week.

I want to enjoy it, but this is a snow to be endured. Crispy, crusty, and without the softening that winter precipitation can sometimes give a hard, cold landscape.

Meandering

Meandering

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Yes, I’m continuing to walk slowly, but that’s not why I’m meandering. I’m meandering because I’ve just received the inaugural copy of Meander Magazine, which includes a reprint of a book review I wrote last year.

These days, my essays and reviews appear mostly in online publications because there aren’t many hard-copy magazines being printed. It’s exciting to witness one take shape and land in my mailbox with a satisfying thunk.

Although the dearth of hard-copy publications is good for reducing clutter, I do miss holding a hefty magazine, turning the pages, seeing what delights each new page holds.

Meander’s cover impressed me with its headline, too. “Returning to Place: Embracing reconnection and belonging” — which is what I try to do with my walking and writing. Meander and I are on the same page, you might say. I wish it all the best!