Just yesterday the melting snow shifted like unpredictable sand, under my boots. Today it’s frozen so hard I did more sliding than walking. Even Fate had a hard time getting up the small incline by the fallen hickory. We both gave up after a few tries and headed back to the farm.
I did stop when I came to the pine needles frozen in the snow.
There was something familiar about them. And the more I looked the more I saw that they were like letters, like symbols. Maybe not the letters I’m familiar with, closer to Runes. And I could see how easy it would be to make an alphabet from the configuration of pine needles dropped in the snow.
I stood there longer than I should have trying to decipher what I was seeing at my feet. A part of me knew there was more to learn about the woods from understanding why all those broken needles were littering the ground under that particular tree.
But still, I looked at them feeling that their meaning was just beyond my reach.
