Failed Attempt

Awoke early to a little more snow, an inch or two, hard to tell, with so many accumulations. Sunday, and there is absolutely no traffic, so I decide to make a run for the ridge. Take a sponge bath, shave and wash my hair, taking full advantage of hot running water, then a quick stop at Kroger. Lovely drive through the white countryside. The last couple of miles, through the State Forest is particularly beautiful, despite the fact that I can't actually see the road. Access to the driveway is tricky, with new snow on top of compacted refrozen ice, and I knew the hike up the hill would be treacherous. Sure enough, even with the crampons and my mop-handle walking stick, I took a fall. I was prepared for it, threw my stick aside (you don't want to fall on your mop and die the Janitor's Death) and took the blow, such as it was, into deep snow, on my right side. Sat there for a few moments and realized that I probably shouldn't go any further, turned around, slid back to the Jeep, beat a slow retreat to town. Maybe later. Maybe tomorrow. Better safe than breaking a hip and turning into a human pop-sickle. I wanted to be home, but there's no percentage endangering life and limb. Besides, I have so many writing projects right now, and I work so slowly, that a dedicated day, in a warm space, with running water, seemed quite attractive. And it was. I'd work on one file for a few hours, then save it, and work on another. Mid-afternoon it was briefly above freezing and I walked over to Kroger for a bag of roasted peanuts, then walked down below the floodwall, leaving a trail of shells. The scene, at the confluence of the Scioto and Ohio rivers, was stunning. The trees, along the banks, up to their knees in snow, and the banks themselves a palimpsest of tracks: muskrat, feral cats, and the various shore birds. One track I noticed for the first time this year, on the ridge and on the river bank; an approximate circle, six or eight inches in diameter with a bird footprint in the center, surrounded with a bilaterally symmetrical circle of brush strokes around the perimeter. When I first saw it, and then thereafter, I'd think about it, but I couldn't make sense of it. Filed it away in that folder labeled "Things I Don't Understand" which is a folder so large that it's become an entire drawer in one of my filings cabinets, alphabetical and divided into sub-sets. Then, a couple of weeks ago, I was walking in with a heavy pack, achieved the ridge, and stopped at the print shop, to sit for a few minutes and rest my weary bones on the little covered deck outside the entry. It's only a hundred yards to my house from there, but I wanted to stop, almost always, and allow some mediation. The outside world and the inside world are separate things. I've learned to be still for long periods of time, and had assumed the position, elbows on knees, head cupped in hands, thinking about nothing. A grouse entered, stage left, and the snow was so thick that when he ruffles his wings he makes a mark in the snow. That's what that is. Wing-tip marks in virgin snow. I should have guessed that. After the fact, it's so apparent. What you see is what you want to see.