Amy in the Garden

It was 12 degrees when I set out into the woods this morning.

These double digits are a lot different than a walk that begins in 80 degrees….I was bundled so effectively that no joints could bend. In fact, when I backed-up to allow a charging Australian shepherd to reach my happy lab MacKenzie, my heels hit the ice beneath the snowbank and I went over backwards, like a mighty elm. I’m pretty sure I heard one of the dog owners yell, “Timberrrrrr!”, amongst the laughter. I needed help getting up.

Still, it was a successful walk. For the first half hour, MacKenzie and I walked quick-pace down the plowed road in the woods. She was concentrating on reading the post-it notes left by the other dogs in the woods, and I was concentrating on keeping my chin warm without breathing moisture onto my scarf. It’s tricky to stay warm and dry when the air is less than 15 degrees.

We always cut up to the road above by heading up a hill past power lines. We’ve had several snows, and so I wasn’t sure it would be passable, but at first glance there was evidence that the hillside had been traveled. I started up, and then realized that what I thought were dog tracks and dog-owner footprints, were actually deer tracks.

Double digits, indeed. So MacKenzie and I were blazing a trail, which only deer had braved before us? One step ahead of the other, I climbed, huffing, steaming breath (direct it OVER the scarf!), and made it up to the sunny roadside above.

This is always my decision point: take the switch-back paths back to the car, or continue along and walk across the Croton Dam bridge and back.

It was too cold. Despite my warming walk up the hill, my face hurt in the air. MacKenzie and I walked back down the switch-backs, and she met two standard poodles, and romped. I visited, through muffled scarf, with the two owners, we met up with a third (the Aussie shepherd), and then I did my backwards plank-fall into the snow.

A lovely morning! I like thinking about the two-digit deer tracks, and the two-digit weather, and how nature always seems complementary.

WORDS FROM OTHERS

When it is so clearly deep winter outside your window, it is lovely to read of the warmer months to-come:

“Wondrous interlacement!
Holding fast to threads by green and silky rings,
With the dawn it spreads its white and purple wings;
Generous in its bloom, and sheltering while it climbs,
Sturdy morning-glory.”

— De Gardenne Boke