2.9.16 On a mild snow-flecked day

Down by the farmer's fields, you drive in the middle of the road. Because there's no one about, and you can see for miles.

Down by the farmer's fields, today in the deep snow, there are coyote tracks from large coyotes, from small coyotes, wandering about, searching for their breakfast

Down along the road by the farmer's fields, one person has come before me, with a dog, going only in one direction, so they looped way around to the right, way over to the other side by the river. 

I'm walking along in the fresh almost-untouched snow, imagining them both walking earlier today, in this land swept clean and bright and white. 

Here on the dirt road by the farmer's fields, the stream passes by, rich and clean and full. Across all of the fields, there is the ready evidence of who else lives here, quietly, beneath the human radar. Because in the silly human way, we tend to think that we are everything. 

There are tiny mouse tracks everywhere , showing how they pop out of a little hole in the snow, and then quick as can be, run across the snow a bit, and then pop down under the snow again. I call it Periscoping, the life of mice, in a sea of snow.

So I look at how they wandered over to various places where the fallen corn lies beneath the blanket of snow, imagining them filling their cheeks with kernels and seeds, to bring the meal back home. I'm seeing in my mind the family of kids after kids after kids and partners and aunts and uncles and best friends and neighbors and visitors from the big city, all coming running to the new delicious meal set out for all.

When my kids were young, and sick from a pesticide exposure, and had to homeschool, we spent so much time with library books. We'd lunk our way down, through the snowy sidewalks, to the neighborhood library, and Cindy would greet us as we tumbled in, inviting us to take out as many books as our hearts desired. 

On the way, I was agreeable to dragging any combination of kids, in the red wagon, but on the way back, they'd need to walk, the wagon filled with riches.

I stood them up all over the old upright piano, opened up on shelves, and window sills , to tantalize them. To tempt them, into the land of nature and imaginings and far away song.

And one of the things that tantalized us most of all was drawings and books about underground lives. Of small creatures and large, of reptiles and insects, living beneath the soil and the realm we inhabited. Because it really was astounding .

In winter or summer, we would wander down by the streams to look at the amber colored rocks in the thrashing waters. And see evidence of those that lived in the mud and soil and fields and forest. Everywhere we went we indulged in speculation. 

And each of them would begin telling stories. Quietly under their breath to themselves. Or loudly, with exclamations and compiled songs, declarations! Of all the inhabitants, alone or in groups or societies, living there, beneath the soil.

Sometimes they would speculate about the layout , the day to day lives. We would do real and natural science, and slip delightedly into make believe . We would study tracking in the wintertimes, and go about excitedly in the forest, calling to one another to decide between young coyote and fox, skunk and possum. 

When we came upon The Borrowers series, the whole thing exploded like nuts. And really, they had the grandest time, imagining tiny people living all sorts of places. And long discussions about what was fair and what wasn't fair, and how come they didn't have any stores, and were they happy.

So today I am walking down the farmers fields, with noone in sight but the pup. And I come to a stand of trees, and then the land closer to the river, and I see the small widely spaced tracks of a fox. I see the small tracks of most probably a possum. 

On this mild snow flecked day, hardly a bird passes by. 

I'm wishing for sunglasses in the glare of the bright sun upon the white washed land, and the pup is losing and finding and losing the ball I throw over and over. A polite neighbor waits in their car by the road for their turn in the heavenly spacious place. 

Cars stream across Coolidge Bridge over there , on the horizon , their windows sparkling in the sunlight like so many flickering lights. 

As I sink into the relative happiness of one more good enough day.