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.