We called it and called it, and now it’s a fact. Winter is done. The ground may still be frozen hard, but birds are working at homebuilding and so are we. Chores a-calling. Why were we so eager for the snow and ice to go?

In the woods, snow is turning to ice turning to water under and on top of thick glaciers. A ribbon of ice marks the way. It’s a slow spring, just a gentle murmuring of water here and there, a wee bit of tinkling where water bests an obstacle or hurries down a miniature declivity. 

We’re out for a quick jaunt down to the bog. Until further notice, cleats are still routine. The hound has his own and he’s particularly happy this morning, bounding and bounding ahead of me down the path that promises him the smell if not the sight of his friends the beavers. And maybe even a goose!

With the cleats, my step is light as well. No trudging in snow, no penguin-walk on ice. If I tried to run like the hound, though, I’d be on my face thirteen times over. Even in my best moments I am more of a long distance plodder than a bounding lightfoot.

Following some particularly large footprints arranged just so. “Whose tracks these are I think I know, …” my brain offers up a refrain.* The Carpenter was here. When? His footsteps are frozen in the trail, in ice that is only slowly sublimating and may hark back to the earliest days of snowshoeing in November, ice that has slowly been collapsing onto itself under the pressure of passers-by and cycles of freeze and melt and successive covering, uncovering, and re-covering since a foot of snow in early November. 

He was probably here yesterday or last week, but it might have been two months back. The hound’s prints are side by side with his own from earlier this week and late maybe last year. Intermingled with these are deer preferring to take a trail that’s been broken.

I am traveling along an imprint of our travels of the winter, a palimpsest of all who have gone here, our footsteps superimposed in layers of our past selves. Was that the day on which the hound went AWOL and I was sure he must have gone into the drink? The day on which I went ass over teakettle down a teeny slope because my boot got stuck? The day I had to backtrack because I’d lost one of my not-inexpensive-but-best-ever cleats somewhere? It’s a ghost trail, a “this is your life” on ice.

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*Robert Frost reads "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"  (1934) Courtesy of PennSound, Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing, University of Pennsylvania.

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Promises 9 (5 x 7 card, 8 x 10 framed print, and large custom print)

Promises 1 (5 x 7 card, 8 x 10 framed print, and large custom print)

Promises 3 (5 x 7 card, 8 x 10 framed print, and large custom print)

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Promises 8 (5 x 7 card, 8 x 10 framed print, and large custom print)

Promises 2 (5 x 7 card, 8 x 10 framed print, and large custom print)

We come this way often, curious about the status of the bog. Can we walk on the ice? Have the beavers been out? What’s the melt look like on a rainy day?

The trail is the same but different every day. Often we pass here in a bit of a hurry — having chosen the shorter walk because there’s not enough time to go find adventure in the 500 acres of public land across the street. We know where to go boldly and where to be careful. We had a bit of a blow today and two trees are down in places where there were none before.

The hound takes the larger one in one elegant jump, on his way to an important task. I clamber over it as fast as I can, scurrying after him, calling his name, knowing I’d better not leave him out here for an adventure. Not with geese landing on the bog, beavers starting their annual construction work, and ice less and less stable every day.

It’s all an act of faith with a bit of magic mixed in. We asserted that ol’ man winter was on the run for so long that he gave up. I am following the footsteps of the dog that accompanied me yesterday, or two weeks ago, sounding his name to make sure he returns from the bog today. Call and stir, call and repeat. Conjure. Claim with your presence today that you will be here tomorrow.