Feather, Pencil, Trowel & Moon

Written In The Snow

Hiking through fresh snow while more flakes fall, I walk among the paths of many. Coyote, fox, beaver, rabbit, squirrel, pheasant, turkey, mouse, raccoon, weasel, opossum, and the various tiny tender marks of songbirds. There are tales written in the snow, if you know how to read them. Read tracks, that is. They really are an ancient form of story-telling. Some of the very first, I am sure. Our own, as humans, took the early form of palm prints in red-ocher on the fire-lighted walls of caves. And, there, now, in the dazzling glint of light on white, are the marks, written as violet and indigo shadows in depressions, like ink on the page, the who, what, where, when, why, and even how, of the Animal Beings. Today it was as though volumes have been written. A compendium. Narratives I read with my eyes, and the Black Dog reads with her nose, following different storylines but coming together over the parts that interest us, both. The splayed paws of Coyote that pursue the smaller paws of Fox, starting, stopping, veering, until they switch to follow the repeating bound patterns of Rabbit, with the imprints of small round toes and fur covered feet, hind feet in front, as they trail off behind a stand of willows. Beaver tracks that emerge from an opening in the frozen marsh, the triangular prints of their webbed hind feet and the hand-like indents of their front paws slightly obscured by the drag of their flat tail. The long, domed trails of the Ones Who Burrow coiling and crossing and looking like raised sigil marks flocked in white. The intermittent drops of blood, like dark rubies or frozen berries, scattered around the five-fingered tracks of an injured raccoon. The many heart-shaped tracks of the Deer People, left as they milled about, soft muzzles sifting the surface of the snow for something to eat, that, in deeper snow, leave long, delicate scrapes from their hoof-tips, punctuated by the hearts, resembling tracks left by cross-country skis and poles, that remind me of my Dad. And, the large fluid brushstroke of an owl’s wingtips as they painted the surface of the snow where the mouse tracks ceased. Then, I turn to hike back home and marvel at the tracks of the Black Dog - just as curiously meandering, but far less urgent - and the bipedal boot prints of Human beside them, adding to the stories, and telling their own.

Reverence

The morning sky was the sweet milk-pink color of new life, and it cast its warm glow across the snow and every frost-kissed branch tip and blade of dry winter grass. It blushed the lean bodies of the deer that moved through the woods, weaving in and out of the dark trees, like a sacred procession of saints, or specters, the only sound their delicate hooves breaking through the crust of snow, the only hurried motion their white tails flicking their awareness of my presence. But, they did not run, and the Black Dog did not chase them, she simply stood at my side like a good girl. Above, three eagles, a Holy Family, dropped from the rosy branches of the tallest tree, and flew long and low with the current of the river that rolled by us all. The experience was named something like “reverence”.