April 7, 2008

• Restless and Breathless

  Clouds cleared out yesterday afternoon and before dark the snowmelt dripping off the roof had turned to icicles.  Temps last night got down into the low teens.  As the rising sun was casting interesting shadows across the fresh snow, I realized what I had out there:  a chance to go crustwalking.  The slushy old snow, under that dusting of clean white, is now frozen hard enough to support my weight.

  I put on a hat and sweater, picked up the camera, and went out.  The cool air wasn’t too cold for my fingers, but my lungs didn’t like it.  I was a bit short of breath even before I took my first tentative steps up onto the crusted snow.  Prudence ruled.  I realized that if I hit a thin spot or came down on my heel first and drove it like a wedge into the crust, I’d sink in up to my hip and have a hard time getting out again.  If I’d been breathing okay I would have risked it, but I wasn’t.

  I shot some pictures (above) of the moose tracks in the yard.  Then I climbed over the woodpile at the mouth of the driveway and walked in the tire tracks up to the break in the tree line for a shot of the muskeg.  In the snow on the road, I got a closeup of the moose’s hoofprint.  It was a small moose, bigger than a calf, probably a yearling.  I had to stop and catch my breath before climbing back over the woodpile.

  Alice was nursing the Piebeans when I came in.  I captured good shots of two more kittens:  Mandy is on the left, and her sister Colander or “Linda,” on the right.  In the group shot below, Count Spatula, “Spats” for short, is at the bottom, and you can see little P.K.’s ear sticking up where she is still plugged into Alice.

  

  

  • 4:00 pm
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