With winter settled in for the duration after storms that took my breath away with daggers of piercing wind on the bog, I now hold my breath and wait for the break to come, looking forward to the sound and the smell and the feel of the water reasserting its indomitable spirit against the icy grip of polar air seeming to seek relief from itself by running south.

Birds tweeting louder than my alarm clock and warm promising morning light lure me down to the bog every day but what I find is a silent, white, feature and faceless plain that bounces the sunlight back to where it came from with a gesture worth of Ahab as if to say, “did you really think you could chase me out of here with those feeble pre-equinooctic rays? Hah!”

And every day I try to penetrate this realm of flat white glitter to find features and depth and expression but it shrugs me off with the same resolute indifference, smoothing over my tracks with loose snow by the time I get back the next day. Suggesting perhaps I try harder, spend some time, not this “quick-walk-before work” thing where I come down here to get my jollies and start the day right.

Even so, this cold — this insistent freeze so hard some people are cutting ice on Ashfield Lake with tools a century old and others drive the Connecticut with four wheels challenging her to plunge them — even that kind of cold can’t completely cover over and freeze fast the last little spot where the water simply flows too fast to let it.

Hah.