Month: January 2021

Escape of the ghosts

There were white ghosts and gray ghosts above, and black shadows of ghosts dancing on the snow. It was an hour before sunrise, and in the gathering light of dawn the ghosts were racing for cover.

Was it their past the ghosts sought after escaping the chimney on the bone-chilling morning in January? However, the smoky ghosts had no bones, so probably no chill, either. With dizzying fluidity they swirled, rose and fell as if avoiding invisible obstacles.

They were wood stove ghosts. I wondered if their release from the firewood and hot coals sent them looking for the forest where they once lived in maple, oak and ash trees, among the birds and squirrels and seasons of all degrees. Will they now spend the rest of their days hiding high in the branches, wisps of the past watching secrets of the present?

I stood in the warm house and stared at the cinema of winter—a snow-covered back yard lit dimly by the advancing dawn. There were fuzzy, fixed shadows—the birdhouse, trellis, deck posts. But there were also moving shadows. I stepped into the cold morning and looked up to watch the ghosts leaping from the chimney in white and gray flickers against a murky sky giving up its stars one at a time. On the ground, racing past my feet the ghosts were dark shadows, changing shapes with the whims of the slight breeze.

The ghosts raced over the herb garden, bounced off the yard shed, climbed its roof and disappeared into the pine boughs above. They were free, no longer standing in the forest or stacked in a pile, but now dancing in the branches.

Counting on crows

There was the crow on a winter’s morning, perched as close to the end of a tree branch as it could, against the cold blue sky, facing the arms and hands of branches wrapped in hoar frost. Was the crow catching sun or taking in the winter scene? Or both?

Many winter days the only birds I see are crows, not counting the usual visitors at the bird feeder. I see crows when I drive, crows when I hike, crows when I’m stacking wood. Along the road, in the fields and woodlands, in the pine trees of the back yard. They are a constant and oh so easy to see—feathered black on winter white.

I take their appearances for granted until I see the rather pensive-appearing crows, like one on the hoar-frosted branch of January, or another I saw perched on a foot-tall corn stubble stalk. One tall crow, I thought at first!

There was another crow in winter that had claimed a patch of grass and dirt the size of a bathroom rug on the road shoulder where the on-ramp meets the freeway. It was a bold crow that refused to give ground no matter how close trucks rumbled past its oasis.

Brave and hardy, these crows. And quite social with each other, which was apparent one day when I drove past two crows rubbing wings while sharing the top of a wooden fence post along a town road. Crow buddies watching traffic. Perfect photo, I thought, but by the time I turned around and came back, they were gone. For all I knew they were direct descendents of Heckle and Jeckle, now hiding in a tree and squawking with laughter.

So I count on crows in the winter, every day, the beauty and boldness of their blackness matched only by their distinct and raucous “caws” piercing the frigid air. They not only survive winter, they seem to live for winter, enhancing the season, as easily as black on white.

Watch on the wind

As I veer off the tree-lined snowmobile trail and set my snowshoes on a meandering path through the open meadow, the wind finds my face. I jog along the twisting trail through the meadow, a trail I’ve packed down on previous outings, having some fun laying out a path with plenty of turns.

I’m snowshoeing at night but not in darkness as the ambient light from the nearby city teams up with the diffused light from a full moon above the clouds. There’s enough illumination to easily see my course. My snowshoes faithfully follow that path, crunch, crunch, crunch on the packed whiteness.

I come out to a large field of picked corn. The wind is more noticeable here, catching more of me as I head west, the last row of corn stubble as my guide. I now get a wide look at the sky as it partially clears. The clouds are racing eastward, chased by a wind that is suddenly switching from southwest to northwest.

As I jog along I think about the wind, how it dictates my direction and choice of clothing. I check the wind by the small windmill in the yard before I leave (I trust it more than my phone). Head into the wind first, I tell myself, and then let it push me home after I’ve worked up a sweat.

Right now I’m working up that sweat as the wind bites at my face. I continue westward, tugging my collar a bit higher, my cap a bit lower, songs about the wind filling my mind in the quiet night. On this night, it’s “Against the Wind.” Still running against the wind.

Then I turn to reverse my steps, and just that suddenly the wind is my friend. But if I think the wind is pushing me home, I’m only half right. I’m also following the wind home, running in second place. Of the wind, poet Alan Alexander Milne penned, “It’s flying from somewhere as fast as it can, I couldn’t keep up with it, not if I ran.”

Sharing the trail

I don’t know my fellow trail users, and they don’t know me. There’s little chance we’ll ever meet, unless they venture out in the daytime or if I decide to hike at night. For the most part I use the trail by winter’s day, they by cold and starry night. It works out fine.

What also works is the agreement I and the animals have made but never discussed. And it goes like this: They make the trail, I help maintain it.

When I strap on snowshoes after the season’s first snowfall, I wonder if the trail I used last winter through the meadows, woods and fields will still be discernible. It is. The deer, rabbits, coyotes and other critters out there have stayed the course, softly but consistently stepping down the grasses and leaves through the snowless months. I simply follow their shallow depression in the early snow. I’m back on track. Their track.

My part of the deal comes with the first significant snowfall. There’s a path—a furrow in the whiteness—to follow despite the gathering snow. I strap on my largest snowshoes and stomp down the path. Snowshoeing out and back on the trail is a good start to make the going easier for the nighttime users.

Sure enough, when I come back the next day, there are animal tracks in my snowshoe tracks. They have taken advantage of my snow trampling. I know, however, that I’m getting the better of the deal. To follow an animal’s trail through the meadows and fields, over the creeks and into the woodlands is to follow the path of least resistance, established by those who live in those places. Every day and night.

I am always impressed how animals find the best passage through brush, over creeks and up and down hills. I take advantage, realizing I am the interloper here. And I’m just happy I can repay my trail mates in times of snow.