Sarah and Sebastian are best friends.
They've known each other almost their whole entire lives. They live in the
countryside on a little Island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. They love their
little Island and they are curious explorers of the world around them. Won't
you come join them?
Sarah awoke early to the deep sighing of
the wind.
She popped up and looked out her window
which was covered in lacy ice ferns left by the deep cold night. The snow was swirling in frosty dips
like a square dancer stepping high then bowing low in one after another do si do.
Just then Sarah's mother opened her bedroom
door.
"No school today Sarah. Go back to
sleep." her mother smiled. "Your father will be home today but I have
to go to work. See you at suppertime!
Sarah pulled the thick layers of warm
quilts up to her chin. I wonder if Sebastian will be dropped off today,
Sarah thought to herself.
Sebastian's mom and dad both worked in the
city like Sarah's mother and on day's off school Sarah's father kept care of Sebastian.
Sarah drifted off to dreamland and awoke
for the second time that morning to the sound of her best friend's voice.
"Come on Sarah! Get up! Are you gonna
sleep all day?"
Sebastian laughed at Sarah with her great
pile of sleepy red hair in a tangle around her face.
"I already had breakfast and I want to
go outside with you." her friend said.
Soon Sarah was getting on her snow suit to
head out with her friend into the snow. The evergreen hedgerow that bordered
the property was a favourite place of Sebastian and Sarah's on blustery
mornings in wintertime. They crawled in under the thick canopy of snow laden
branches and lay back in the cold quiet of the hollow beneath the trees.
Craggy bits of a gray green lichen called
Old Man's Beard hung in shaggy tufts on some of the bare branches. Sarah
grabbed a lichen covered twig off the snow beside her. She held it up to her
face and Sebastian laughed at her.
"You look like an old man" he
said to her.
Sarah giggled and handed it to her pal.
"You try it Shun."
He
held it up and it tickled his chin.
"These trees are getting old like
great- grandpa. Dad told me this stuff only grows on very old trees."
Shun
tossed the stick aside and looked out at the stormy day.
"If I was a rabbit this is where I
would live in the wintertime." Sebastian said to Sarah as he shook an
evergreen branch and powdery snow fell on his face. He rubbed his mitten on his
cheek and brushed the snow away.
"Oh Shun" Sarah said. "You
mean Hare, not Rabbit. Remember what we learned at school last winter. Rabbit's
are at the pet store but Snowshoe Hare's live in the wild here. We saw their tracks
last year in the field out back."
Shun
remembered the little tracks which looked a bit like miniature snowshoes but
smiling at his friend said he would always call them rabbits because he liked
the word rabbit better.
Sarah crawled out of their secret hideaway.
The cold wind brushed against her face. Shun crawled out behind her.
“I’m freezing.” Sarah said. "Let's get
some hot cocoa. We can come back out later on."
The two friends went inside to the warmth of
Sarah’s house. They drank hot cocoa and played puzzles and painted pictures. Sebastian
said one of his pictures was of a white rabbit hopping in deep snow in a
blizzard. Sarah laughed at him because the page he held up was blank. Sarah
loved how her best friend could always make her giggle.
Prince Edward Island is home to many
species of Lichens; Old Man's Beard is just one of them.
To learn more about Old Man's Beard visit:
https://flandrumhill.wordpress.com/2012/04/27/lost-beards-of-the-forest/
Snowshoe
Hare tracks are some of the animal tracks you see in the winter woods and
fields of PEI. To learn more about Animal tracks of PEI visit: http://www.cwf-fcf.org/assets/pdf/en/trackingwinter-72.pdf
