The last hurrah?

March 5, and even the snow flakes seem to float with the disinterest of  knowing the futility of clinging to anything - even winter.  They drift in the air, not seeming to care whether they make it down to the earth or not, indifferent and aimless in their last effort to rally themselves into an actual storm.  Shadow, on the other hand, is in his full element, relishing the cold, the snow and the jaunt.  He is so game every morning that I anticipate our walks with a kind of hungry curiosity about what we will witness, hear, or feel on our short trek around the back of the barn and up to Forbidden Drive.  Today the geese were taking flying landings into the rushing creek and then coasting along the tiny rapids that raced under branches, over rocks and along the center of the water; really, there was even white water, and geese and ducks were playing in the current as though they were skating, gleefully honking, quacking and shouting from their beaks and bills across the creek at each other as though it were some team sport.

I took some videos because the sound of the rushing stream and the squawking geese made so present the silence of the snow itself that I was breathless with the ruckus and at the same time able to  hear the softness in the edges surrounding the scuffle.  Even the street was draped in delicate calm once we tromped up the hill and out of the park, and home never beckoned more bountifully, the numbers on my sign hidden beneath the light blanket, the path strewn with a welcoming white, and dear Shadow,hesitant about coming inside, his own coat covered in a fluff of flakes.

And even more miraculous, The New York Times was waiting for me, wrapped in its little blue plastic bag.  The anticipation of a housebound day of almost sacred solitude excites and terrifies.