A world covered in ice had us bitching and moaning about New England winters and comparing brands of cleats none of which work as advertised of course. And when they do they take fifteen minutes to put on or they flop off just as you were making a particularly daring step up or down negotiating an icy ledge or rock or simply a patch in the road. Having taken an exciting five mile hike at Audubon’s High Ledges in Shelburne that involved enough ice to cause my nephew (22) to relent and use a ski pole and had some pretty steep descents good for some more and some less intentional glissading on our butts that in turn nearly landed us in the drink a couple of times and didn’t do anything to him I think but left me black and blue all over, I am getting pretty particular about cleats.

But now it is slogging through rotting ice in the darkening woods so misty all around and redolent of late winter and childhood forages in the woods, laced with waves of warmer and damper and cooler and damper and then emerging onto the bog. Where the ice is drowning in its own melting but still down there and the dog not sure how it is he walks out where he went this morning on ice and now he stands to his knees in water but he’s still on ice.

And the ice will still be there tomorrow morning when instead of it 50 degrees it will be 22 and maybe just maybe there will be a thin veil of it left behind by the receding waters. The day after that I may find a white, white world with ice crystals so fine they shoot shards of happiness deeply into my soul.

Today, being a boggy, soggy squitchy day of the sort that makes me happiest of all and wish to lie down in the wet snow and ice and sniff and feel until I am removed to the tree tops, makes me a wee bit nostalgic. I started posting my photographs of the bog and writing about water one year ago this week. Check out today’s images along with Born Wet and Boggy Soggy Squitchy World.