The wet snow packs hard under my snowshoes, with each step I carry a brick beneath my foot.
Long shadows like purple ribbons undulate on the swells of snow that cover the ground in the woods.
The naked tree tops wink at me in every color of the rainbow. All around me, the crinkle of bits of ice breaking from the branches. They drop in the snow making smooth round pocks and divots.
The faint, snow-blurred feet of a rabbit. The thread-thin foot and tail prints of mice going from tree to tree. A mole or vole plows a wavy line that ends in a hole. The feet, brush of wings, and feet again of a small bird. Where Biddy’s body is slowly disappearing, the tracks of a single coyote circle her remains which have been dug up from the snow.
Snow fleas gather, speckling the snow gray at the base of a tree.
How do they choose the tree? Are they always in the sun, or maybe north of the tree? How long do they live? Where do they come from?
Since I have learned what snow fleas are, they are no longer invisible to me.
