A Walk in the Woods March 30

Before the icy rain began, the sky was plumbeous, backlit with sunlight.  The snow was shrinking back, slipping into the swale and away.  

 I could stamp on ice four inches thick and break it.  Beautiful!  And oh, the green. Needles on trees, lichen on branches, moss emerging from the ground.  

 Tiny moss forests and lichen valleys.  Wntergreen, which does exactly what it's name suggests. To know that green persists under the deep snow...

Bunchberry, or dwarf dogwood, wearing last year’s red and somehow still in style.  

 

The textures and patterns were entrancing.

And what a gift!  I heard them long before I saw them: the tiny ringing contact calls of Golden-crowned Kinglets.  Binoculars and camera safely tucked away in the house, check.  Fortunately  one kindly sprite popped out on a moss-cloaked stump three metres away, trilled, hopped up to a branch, trilled again, and was gone.  It was the size of a ping pong ball. I was delighted.

After I returned with camera and binoculars the trees above me rang with their contact calls and song.  Golden-crowned Kinglets sing like chickadees warming up to their full song, but then they break out into tiny fairy laughter.  I spotted one kinglet high in a tree above me, then a Black-capped Chickadee popped into view beside it.  What a monster next to the kinglet!  Its song was deep and sonorous next to the kinglet's.

I was so caught up in the wonder of all this newly exposed colour and sound that I didn’t notice the rain begin.  When I stood up from ogling a small patch of bearberry I noticed a drop or two.  I told my trusty assistant it was time to head home.  He did not object.  

By the time we reached the yard icy pellets were assailing from above. I was soaked.  My trusty assistant appeared wet but no water penetrated his thick fur coat.  

What a walk.

Oh, and by the way,  this is what we woke to the next day.

Spring!