The snow is fine and powdery. It always seems to energize the dogs. Tess immediately starts running around, powder flying in the wind, like she has never seen snow before. The snow crunches underfoot. It is otherwise quiet. Is that because snow dampens noise or because people-activity slows in bad weather?
I stop at the footbridge for a photo of the dogs, fumbling with cold fingers to set it up. Gabbie decides to lie down in a "let me know when you are done" mood. Click, click. We cross over the foot bridge to the east side where the new trail is.
It may be cold, but it does not feel that way as we walk. Something about snow in the woods is just magical. A bird flits from a leafless spice bush. A chipmunk scurries around and under a log. The dogs stop to investigate. A woodpecker taps out morse code on a lifeless tree branch in the canopy overhead. Rabbit tracks cross the trail. There is the faintest whiff of a skunk.
On top of the ridge, the vista through the woods down the valley toward the water falls is fantastic. I try to capture it with my phone camera. Can't reproduce the beauty in a photographic image. We walk down off the ridge towards the bridge. Play time erupts. Both dogs are in a full fledged run-around, snow and leaves flying, complete with ankle-biting, and butt-in-the-air play mode. They fly, skidding as they go, across the snow-covered bridge and back. Surely one of them will fall into the creek.
Composure sets in, and we venture to the waterfall. It is frozen in a static icy array. Gabbie ambles off to make a solid waste deposit. Then we trudge up the hill and back to the house. I stop to pick up some firewood. Tess is running around yet again in huge circles - one last activity outburst for the road, as it were. Then back to home base.
Winter can be miserable and inconvenient at times. But on this day, all is well in a wintry Bittersweet Woods.
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