Blizzard Feast
Landscape always alive
The bomb cyclone winds started to rage around 2:00 AM last night. I could only imagine the carnage they might lay across the trails in downed limbs or completely toppled trees across the property. I awakened before daybreak to the whistle of wind that pops and cracks the roof trusses overhead.
I looked for the bloodshot glow of the bedside clock, but it sat dark. The power outage began around 5:00 AM and my first thoughts went to how we would warm the house. I felt an extra crackle in the air as I swung my legs from under the cocoon of down. The temperature had not yet significantly dropped, but I knew it a wise time to build a fire.
Sonny rose from his dog bed to investigate my predawn clattering. We pulled back the newly snow coated tarps from the woodpile in search of something resembling dry lumber. I brought the logs in stages to the garage because the outdoor furnace stood useless with no electric pump to move the heat into the house.
Hearth Heat
Dinner near the fire.
Breaking New Trail
Each snowstorm cleans the slate.
Wind Whipped
Flakes race across the meadow.
Day's End Embers
The power's on and the fire's done.
Sonny's curiosity piqued at my shoulder. He sat on his haunches and cocked his ears left then right as he watched me load the fireplace with tinder, place the logs, then set it ablaze. Once we successfully chased away the chill, we hit the trails.
Any evidence of early December ski tracks disappeared in the melt of warm days, rain, and now the fresh depth of snow drifting around tree trunks. At first glance the landscape appeared desolate. In the depth of the woods an old growth beech rocked for the last time in the wind and cracked forty feet above the ground. The crown splashed down in a shower of splinters. We were glad to be eighty yards farther down the trail instead of crushed or impaled behind.
But even if it kills you, the landscape is never dead.
In the final trail loop of the morning Sonny caught the scent of the deer flushed from the thicket of briars. The snow once clean, frozen, and lifeless drew the eye up the slope following the bounding pock marks of deer, then dog.
When I clicked out of my skis for the day, the wind still gusting and snow falling, shrill chirps trilled through the sibilant air. Up above a flock of cedar waxwings feasted amid the flakes. Their frantic flapping and jockeying for fruit fed them for another day.
Life continues without end.
