February 10

The access road that leads to the lower woods and Asnebumskit Pond is drifted in nearly three feet deep. This morning, I put on a pair of snowshoes and gaiters and trudged my way down the road toward the pond.

The snow remains nearly weightless and though deep it is fairly easy to shuffle along, leaving a series of small trenches in my wake. Sometimes, when the snow is like this, I’ll bring the dogs along, and they follow behind my footsteps, using the trenches as paths to navigate the deep snow, porpoising from one patch to the next.

The winds from yesterday had finally lessened, and the cut in the woods that is the road leading to the pond is incredibly beautiful, with the morning sun angling through the forest and reflecting off of snow that covers nearly everything.

It is all the more magical to simply listen to the sounds all around – the barest whisper of a gentle breeze that flutters the sere leaves, the curious call of a chick-a-dee that comes to visit from a nearby pine bough, and the damping sound of snow falling from branches in clumps to the ground, set loose by the warming of the morning sun.

Compared to the fury of the past two days, when winter pinned us within the house and hearth, the gentle still of this sun-dappled section of the lower woods is revitalizing.