Beech Hill.
No cloud in the sky, no breeze in the air, no leaf on the tree. Well, a few leaves on the tree, but they’re hangers-on from fall, and they don’t diminish the seeming purity of this squinty-bright morning. White below, pale blue above. And a fiery vortex rising, turning snow and ice to water droplets flashing past my window.
Sometimes on a morning like this I feel a little scared. Whereas the sun’s reemergence after several days of overcast lifts many people’s spirits, I kind of miss the clouds. To me they’re like a woolly ceiling. They keep away the adamantine fire, the horrifying boundlessness of the universe, and somehow define a closer, softer, more graspable space. On a morning like this, a part of me worries about slipping upward and away into the luminous, limitless blue.
* * *
The temperature peaked at about 35 degrees (F). A few clouds moved in from the bay finally, which helped. I heard chickadees chatting in the trees out back, and crows calling out instructions from the periphery. A solitary herring gull flew over. On a trip to town I saw a few ring-bills, but no rock pigeons, as I usually do.
In mid-afternoon, I couldn’t resist embarking on my second-ever snowshoeing hike. I headed for Beech Hill’s wooded trails. It was nearly 3:30 p.m. No one had plowed the parking lot, and my pickup nearly foundered despite its four-wheel drive—that much snow has fallen in the past few days. Donned my gear, grabbed my camera, decided to take the lower trail.
No one else had walked the lower wooded trail, turns out, since all this recent snowfall; I’d say a good six inches had fallen since anyone had ventured that way. And in all perhaps eighteen or twenty inches of snowfall had by now collected on the wooded hillside.
The waxing moon.
The air was mild and still, the woods quiet. Snowshoes or no showshoes, the uphill walk through deep, virgin snow felt like climbing a thousand steps. Sweat soaked the band of my new cap. I didn’t even bother wearing gloves. My pulse rate, in fact, must’ve approached 180 beats a minute—but still I managed to live to tell the tale. And the tale is one of a lovely winter hillside, a setting sun, the feeling that the canopy of the trees would protect me from the frighteningly empty blue sky.
Nearing the top, panting like a dog, I first noticed the waxing crescent of the moon.
At the summit it occurred to me I was the only human for a mile in all directions. The trail, unblemished. The landscape, pure. I heard one crow—the only bird—and rabbit tracks littered the trailside. But the fresh-smelling air, the sweet chill, the swiftly fading sunlight, going orange, all got me feeling alive and grateful and blessed. And I thought it odd that I’d expended such an effort to ascend even nearer the frightening, empty sky.
Today’s List
1. Black-capped chickadee
2. American crow
3. Herring gull
4. Ring-billed gull
Penobscot Bay (from Beech Hill).
Tags: American crow, black-capped chickadee, herring gull, ring-billed gull
