We are out for a walk, down the road by the snow covered beaver dam. Zeke hesitates and stops.
Nose turns.
Ears slowly rise.
"Smell something bud?"
He looks over slowly, nose twisting to follow the scent, ears in radar mode. The look seems to tell me that this is important.
I try but can't quite pick up the sound.
Not that I can smell anything.
"What is it?" I whisper.
He is the hunter. This is his element. The faint musk of some wild animal rides air currents that only his keen senses can pluck out and analyze. Ears zero in on a distant rustle and he knows the direction and distance.
I strain my ears and can just pick out a high pitched yap. Maybe a fox, hard to tell, very distant. Ok, I can't hear anything. There's an airplane droning off somewhere but that's about it.
Zeke moves now. Slowly. Off the road. Nose working the scent. He gingerly ascends the snow bank. Fine tuned body moving with quiet grace. He must be following a faint trail left in the snow.
I hold my breath, wishing to become a part of this dance, if only vicariously. He's operating at levels I can only dream of. A master in his element.
At which point Zeke leans over and snarfs up a chunk of old bread, recently thawed from its ice tomb.
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Really incredible weather this weekend. The temperature nudged into the sixties for a few moments, not a cloud in the sky, and everywhere the sound of melting snow. Not that winter is over, mind you, but at least there's a glimmer of hope.
The photo is of a favorite spot for kayakers come Spring. I'll share a followup when everything is melted and it's a frothing torrent of whitewater. The white band on the distant hill is Lebanon's local ski hill. A smidgen of a ski hill with a T-bar lift and two ski jumps. Yesterday it was a flurry of activity with little skiers, more clothing and gear than skier really, sloshed down the hill.
Our front (south) side roof is completely clear now while the north side is down to a foot or two of snow and ice. We usually don't have flooding problems in the house, but if all of this snow lets loose at once then we'll be bailing with the "low landers." On a long walk yesterday I noticed one family's yard still had half the swing set under snow. The picnic table was starting to breach and a plastic playskool fort was buried to the parapets.
And then there is our front yard. Like I've said before...nasty winter.
A bazillion years ago I moved out here from Wyoming. It was late December when I packed all of my belongings (and a cat named Spaz) into the largest UHaul they'd dare put on a trailer hitch, and saddled it to the barely adequate Nissan 200sx I owned. Drive East young man. It was a long trip, especially for Spaz who spent most of it hid somewhere under the piles of possessions until nightfall when he'd slink around the car, exploring, trying to find a means of escape or a nice juicy mouse.
We were motoring our slow way across the USA to a brand new job in Bangor, ME, working for the FAA. They just *had* to have me there before the end of the year. I was envisioning big and important things that only I could do for the government. Actually it was just a matter of clearing up some paperwork and filling slots before the year end window closed. I ended up sittting around waiting for Spring training, unqualified to do anything.
Anyways, back to the slow procession eastward. Spaz and I were getting more than a little road weary. On the Pennsylvania interstate the road was worn such that it created sympathetic harmonic oscillations between the car and UHaul. Drive any faster than fifty and the trailer would start rocking like a house boat full of newlyweds, slamming and slapping the car around, parts grinding into the pavement.
Not that it was any simple feat to drive that fast. The extreme load meant that the car's zero to sixty performance was classified as "maybe." Forget braking. I tried to plan ahead, letting off of the gas and bouncing to a grudging halt some time later. The whole trip was a test of nerves. Spaz had it easy, starting of traumatized and slowly becoming used to it. I started off optimistic and starry eyed and became a nauseaus, coffee jittered wreck before we made it out of Pennsylvania.
The good news was that the weather cooperated the entire trip. It wasn't until Southern Maine that we really started seeing snow. Even though there was quite a bit of snow along the edge of the interstate the road surface seemed pretty clear. Or was it? I must have been having clear road hallucinations because the closer I looked the more I realized that the road was covered in a fine sheen of white ice.
If you were driving up I-85 in Maine the winter of '87 you might have swerved and sworn as some Wyoming idiot suddenly decided to drive thirty five miles an hour below the posted speed limit. Imagine his confusion when no one else shared his concern about the heavy ice build up. It finally got to the point that he pulled over, opened a door, and leaned out to touch the road.
?!? Huh ?!?
Yes, that was my introduction to New England road salt. Salt so heavy it turns the roads white and melts cars over the span of a few years.
You should send that "Nasty Winter" picture to National Geographic! Or at least the Valley News.