thoughts on beginning something

Today I gathered up some poems and made something new from them - taking the sketches I made a quilt of a poem - a nice long poem - just to begin this process is heaven. The other thing I began today is snowshoeing. Oh, I've snowshoed before, but it was a long time ago and a few provinces to the west! I didn't take the snowshoes that the fella got me for my birthday - no harness yet for them - he will make me one of twine like the Innu have - so I took out the slim aluminum ones with buckles and latches. Other than the struggle to put them on with Bella on her long lead (she's under close lead arrest until she remembers who to come home to) it was easy-peasy.



Off we went out to the beach - the snow drifts as high as our fence! And on out to the center of the bay. Bella not happy and making me know it by acting totally crazy on the lead but I felt great despite that. The ability to move where yesterday I couldn't go - well it is a fabulous feeling! I remember it - racing through the woods with my pal Laurel, in New Brunswick - each of us with a fully loaded water pistol (tequila sunrises as I recollect) squirting the heavenly stuff into each other's mouths while out in the crisp winter air. Or with my kids when they were small in Ontario - out in Brooke Valley, swerving along the stone walls dividing the properties one from another. Also the light this time of day is great - I didn't take the camera though - that would've been one technology too far. Of course, as soon as I got out there, I wished I had. Ah well - beautiful oblongs of light, the sun low in the west, the horizon pinking up like a freshwater pearl and stillness. Oh the beautiful sound of that particular silence!

This photo is from much earlier - probably November ...