Outside the sky is a watercolor of clouds, the air is cold but not brutally so. Twigs stick out from the soft carpet of snow. Some are young trees. Others are poison ivy seemingly disarmed but still carrying noxious oil. Dried stalks of herbaceous plants hold viable seed, like the tall goldenrods and asters that edge my garden beds. When I accidentally brush against them, fluff and seeds rain down to lie in wait for the growing season.

A few days ago a hawk flew overhead as I was driving to town. I assumed it would be a red-tail, but as I got closer I could see the patterning on the wings was wrong. It tilted, and dark patches on its front gave it away as a rough-legged hawk, one of several birds that winter here and are most familiar with our area in its bleak aspect. The species is a refugee from the north through the action of evolution, but individuals experience the brief arctic summer and never see ours.

This past week, the days were below freezing. Freezing in this case refers to the freezing point of liquid water. As I walked along the pond before work, all of us living things were trying to ward off or control the creep of ice. All of us are made up of cells and of large proportions of water, from the white-throated sparrows hiding among shrub branches to the mice and squirrels who made the tracks criss-crossing the pond’s surface. The shrubs themselves have lost their water rich leaves.

When I walked the boardwalk across the street, I half expected my passage to be preceded by shrieking frogs as in summer, but the pools are mostly ice-bound. My footsteps make muffled crunches. Above, trees creak and branches rustle. The red dragonflies which used to alight on the railings have wandered elsewhere. The frogs are tucked away in the bottom of pools deep enough not to freeze solid. They’re taking advantage of the fact that solid water is lighter than very cold liquid water, which sinks to the bottom away from the cold air. Perhaps to them only our growing season is real, while our winter is less than a dream.

Earlier this week, heavy rain turned to heavy snow just in time for my lunch walk. Thick, wet flakes melted into swollen pools or formed sodden ice at the edges. Water coated the bramble. It hovered between liquid and solid with crystals forming along the branches and droplets hanging from the ends.

Wetland pools had redrawn their shores and claimed sections of the path with eddies and waterfalls. I managed to soak through to my socks while trying to jump over a wide incursion of water. As difficult as snowy weather can be, cold liquid water presents its own challenges. Rain can’t be brushed off. It threatens to mat feathers and furs, collapsing their insulating air spaces. Wool socks are also vulnerable. Fortunately I had a heated space to return to nearby.

Many of the forest denizens present and awake for the winter don’t have this luxury. They also can’t add an insulating layer overnight. I wandered among deer in the storm. Two young deer hung close by the sides of their mothers, of whom they have become miniature versions. Stout and furry, they all had little dustings of snow on their backs and skull caps on their heads. They stopped and stared when I appeared. One began browsing towards me, occasionally glancing at me until his or her mother had enough and hurried away. It was a few seconds before the little one caught on and trotted after her.



I left them picking their way among the hillocks and pools and returned to work. That evening I stepped out into the world foretold by the holiday decorations, tinted blue by the evening. Wet snow outlined each branch and blanketed the ground. The next morning, cold temperatures had consolidated the power of ice and snow on the landscape. A small pond bound in ice muttered to itself with tinkles of ice crystals falling from shore-side shrubs. The understory was a spray of branches embossed in white. Where the snow cover is thin, ice crystals erupt from the ground. The other benefit to snow is that a good blanketing insulates the ground from sudden melts and freezes.

End of November