Cold Weather

We have just gotten past a couple of weeks of persistent sub-zero temperatures (Fahrenheit). Walking the dog was a challenge as her feet would get too painful to continue after just two blocks. I would pick her up and carry her home. After a couple of days we got her some dog boots and after a few attempts I managed to get good at putting them on and securing them.

Walking about town in these conditions there is a heightened sense of mortality. That the cold is enough to consume you if anything were to go wrong and you were to get stranded in it. The snow, even when compacted, has a strange squeak and plasticity to it. It sits light and fluffy on the ground and Mollie has great joy leaping about in it.

The birds are redistributed differently now as the temperature has changed survival strategies. The house two blocks down that hosts a dozen or more squirrels now has a flock of sparrows. Tthe Stellar’s Jays from another part of town frequent this house owing to the abundance of food here, as do the red shafted flickers.

In the middle of the day we saw the two moose walking in broad daylight past our front windows; ambling down the sidewalk and around the corner. I dashed out to watch their broad dark forms make their way down the sidewalk. The young one reaching out to try and strip what it could of some bare tree branches as it passed. Hunger has driven these changes.

I watch the crows while we are out walking and wonder too how they are suffering but think again, perhaps this is a time off plenty for the omnivores as those that succumb to the cold become sustenance.

There is no death without life and no life without death.