It was too cold

...to paint yesterday, so I looked around instead. The forest was moving. Moose tracks. Bear scat. Hooded Mergansers and Green-winged Teal sunning on logs. Belted Kingfishers fishing. Osprey, Broad-winged Hawk, Bald Eagle, Merlin. Ovenbird. Hermit Thrush. A Great Blue Heron moving from shore to shore. A Sandhill Crane lifting from a clearing. It was endless and I was moving along with it all. Wherever I went, I knelt. I felt whatever was growing. Glowing.

This spring we've been spending a lot of time down the Mystic Lake Road. We were there again yesterday, scoping the water, scanning the trees and scaling the rocks and ditches. Near McRobbie Lake, where the beavers have created the most beautiful dam I've ever seen, I skidded down a steep ditch, jumped across a stream and knelt to photograph a culvert and the marsh marigold that beamed close to its mouth.


I knelt for a long time. My jeans mopped up the water. My jacket sleeves mopped up some more. Cold knees and elbows left me clumsy. Cold hands lost grip on the scrub I used to pull myself back up to the road. I thought about the placement of each step. The erosion. The slips. I was shivering by the time I got home.