The winter world is introspective. All around us beings slumber, and our energies move inside after three long seasons of gardening. The last couple spinach crops are frozen under a layer of snow. Fortunately there's a lot to do as we move back into our radically remodeled house.

I take breaks to walk outside, where everything was so still yesterday. Snow rested along top of motionless branches. Muffled sounds came from distant beings doing distant things. Geese honked as they made their evening movements, traffic rushed along, and two pops of gunshot rang out. This is the country, after all.

My footsteps exposed green ferns through the snow. Like my spinach (still edible as of a few days ago), life bides its time in the cold. I wondered if enough light bled for the spruce and pine needles up above to photosynthesize, or if they idled on stored energy like our solar-panel driven electric system under the solid gray sky.

The winter flocks were elsewhere, and not even a chickadee called in the silence. Squirrels and rabbits were present in signs, tracks crossing my path on unknown errands and their lingering scents which my nose is unable read. If the absent birds left scent trails I had no way to know, my weak nose sniffling in the cold, sterile air. No matter how many winters I go through, I always seem unaccustomed to it when it comes back around.