Listening /Looking up and seeing crows in the cottonwood trees during the snowy days last week

I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech-tree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines.

Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)

The snow is gone for now. Snow never lasts very long in the lowlands of the Pacific Northwest. I'm grateful for that. I will walk four miles in the snow but that's all. When the snow is gone, I walk freely again, but it always takes a little time to get my sense of well-being back. Something about snow pulls the rug out from underneath my usually good spirits.