Yesterday, a brilliant New Year's eve afternoon, my husband and our oldest daughter and our son went for a walk in a nearby woodland.
I did not take part in the walk. Too much Christmas coupled with the cumulative exhaustion of the travails of 2018 left me with no other choice but to seek the refuge of my own bed and a couple of good books for company. As much as I wanted to be out walking, resting was not optional.
When they came back they shared with me some sustaining images from their outing.
The walking trail was narrowed by ice and snow and took them from a declining snowy softwood stand to an old pit and a then a farmer's field.
They came upon several different piles of snowshoe hare droppings numbering in the hundreds (and evidencing a small snowshoe hare population there) with the most being spotted at the edge of a snowy field of abandoned green cabbages. A veritable Mr McGregor's garden of Eden to the hare's, minus Mr McGregor but likely frequented by enough predators' to keep the rabbit's tail short.
Another note was the sighting of coyote (or perhaps coywolf as my son has photographed one in the area) tracks in the snow and a third and final nature note was finding a dead bird which had been ravaged most likely by a sharp-shinned hawk.
Before they left for home they heard a rumbling sound and saw a person on a four wheeler coming towards them.
My husband wondered if the land owner might not like someone tearing around on his property near the gentleman's new home because in the autumn he had complained to my husband about being bothered by some kids on ATV's on his property. He was very surprised to see that the person driving the ATV was in fact the land owner himself. He paused and spoke with him for a moment. The driver is a friend of my husband's, a man in his seventies who was extremely ill and had been hospitalized with cancer a few short months ago. He responded well to his treatment and decided that there was no time like the present to be having some fun and living his life. He and his two children all had cancer treatments in the past year. He gifted himself the ATV and tore around in the snow like a little kid. What is there to say to that but Happy New Year and que sera sera?
So much of life and death right there in one short outing.
New Years are funny times. They can feel ominous or filled with potentiates. They represent many different things to so many different people. Maybe a time of new beginnings for some. Same old, same old for others.
Like this morning for example.
I was the first asleep in our home last night (no rah, rah, sis boom bah for me) and the first awake today. After completing my happy early morning chores for our two dear pet rabbits I made myself a pot of green tea and sat in my little dining room looking out our window to the snowy New Year's morning.
There was nary a track in the yard near our garden or the stump by the old Maple out front which our oldest daughter keeps well stocked with black oil sunflower seeds in the colder months.
No greater perfection can there be to begin the year with but a woodland scene enveloped in a smattering of fresh snow.
Our resident squirrel (Snap-pea) keeper of the stump and general yard defender was still in his little nest in our back woods. First, two crows swooped in from their night time roost and they headed for the stump. They were quickly followed by three others. They rooted around the stump and one found a bit of bread the squirrel had buried in the seed. Another dug up some bread he had hid in the leaves which had gathered in the corners of the sandstone bordering our front garden. They all chomped a few seeds before the ruler of the roost, little wild red Snap-pea, zoomed in with a defiance that seems to border on evil (but is simply the ways of a dominant and very territorial squirrel). It swooped in and managed, as it does several times daily, to scare off all the crows and two blue jays by seeming to be in many places at one time--and it isn't even an actual, biological flying squirrel.
This scene will play out many, many times in the days and weeks to come so long as something doesn't take the rascally squirrel the way of the bird on the walk yesterday.
Today I welcome the quiet of a deep snowfall to ponder how and where my feet might fall in the year to come. This evening there will be a New Year's potluck at my sister's place if the roads are clear enough to travel. Tomorrow I will make fresh footprints of my own.
Happy New Year!
May 2019 be a year filled with more and more people connecting deeply with nature and dissolving those stories that separate us!
In Peace and Goodwill,
Jill
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