Images from the day: Snowshoes crunching along, slithering in soft snow and breaking through crust of hard snow. Hoar frost on silver fir boughs, thin filaments of ice–needles upon needles. The howl of hillclimbing snowmobiles. A tiny white snowflake on my black glove. Overcast sky. Ravens in the distance. Flittering movement–a winter wren is darting in and out of crevices in the snow. It disappears and reappears, tail erect, shiny eye on me. I remember summer and the long liquid trilling of these little mites in the brush near streams. Today there are only short chips of sound, and the whirr of wings.
In The Rainshadow 
I gained 2 things from reading this: I learned and was transported. What I learned was that there are “snow hunters” in the form of tiny birds.. never thought about or witnessed a feathered creature searching cracks in the snow for harbored game. And, as I walked my own woods today, gathering White Birch bark for kindling, on more than one occasion I paused to tip my head far back, slide my gaze up tall, tall, tall, perfect and straight, pre Pine Blister disease White Pines whose tops tickled the belly of the sky… it was here at one of these stops of appreciation that I heard, high up, a stream of birdsong, smooth as cream, melodious.. unrecognized. Your words took me back to that spot and that moment. Thanks! Arlene
Such a beautiful evocation, the words and the drawing melded. So generous, the spare world of the present! Thank you.