When I awoke the other morning, I realized that perhaps for the third time in a couple of weeks, a layer of ice covered everything in sight.  So outside I went. 

     As usual, I was drawn first to the upper deck’s railing to see how the next ridge and the long, green valley in between would look this morning.  Striations of misty clouds stretched along the valley,  obscuring all but thin, green lines of the distant ridge.  Soft, greenish mounds peeked over the top cloud layer.  Soon the striations thinned, and more mountain green emerged.

     The moment I stepped into the driveway, a sudden, sharp whir in the leaves caught my attention.  I turned quickly to see a grouse dart from the ground up into the trees.  Darn!  Will I ever spot a grouse before it spots me?  I long to see a grouse when it’s nestled on the ground somewhere.  But I have never seen one except when it was ‘running away.’  Although a large bird, the grouse is well-camouflaged with its mottled brown feathers.      

     I walked a little farther up the driveway, then stood and looked.  The holly tree’s leaves were longer than usual.  Accentuating the tip each green leaf was a hanging, frozen drop, shining and clear. 

     A few steps on I saw, as I’d expected, that the tall bamboo stalks lining that section of the driveway were bent way over under their weight of ice.  I almost laughed as I noticed a little icicle on one stalk that didn’t seem to respect the law of gravity.  This icicle came straight out from the bowed bamboo, parallel with the ground for about a half-inch, then veered down, a glassy little elbow.  Hmmm.  This icicle must have begun to form when the bamboo stalk stood upright.  But as the bamboo bent, the icicle bent too, as it continued toward the ground.   

     Having surveyed the scene near the house, I decided to walk a little.  The brown oak leaves that had been blown into piles along the little dirt road above the house crunched beneath my feet.  But how different these January leaves felt than they had in October.  This crunching came from the breaking and splintering of an icy veneer coating the leaves.  Stiff with cold and wet, the leaves bent and cracked under my feet, making a satisfying wintry sound.–April Moore

    

    

This entry was posted on Friday, January 9th, 2009 at 2:39 pm and is filed under Celebrating our beautiful Earth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.