Zen

The photo of Zen on his own was taken yesterday afternoon, as was the photo of Jay in the snow. I missed the shot of Jay feeding Zen an apple, but Zen had a lovely smile. You see the house from the back behind Jay.  The lower windows are our kitchen, and the higher ones to the left are Dan and Mary’s kitchen in the apartment above the garage. The third photo is of Dan and Mary bringing Zen in from his walk this afternoon. Zen is such a sweet presence here.  He has a nice space in the barn where he can be in out of the weather, but even in wind and snow, he’s out a lot, snuffling the snow aside to eat grass under it.  Dan says his lips get chapped.

Between the photos taken yesterday and the one from today we had some pretty amazing wind and quite a bit more snow. The house is solid in the wind, not drafty at all.  But I know from the sound of it that we are on an unprotected hill.  Nothing slows the wind until it hits the house and swirls around it. The snow fell from the sky, but the wind blew it nearly horizontal. And the wind picked up huge clouds of snow from the drifts on the ground and blew them across the falling snow.  It wasn’t quite a white out, but it was bad enough this morning that we decided to skip the drive into Cooperstown for aqua class. The wind had blown all night and blew well into the morning, and then it was done.  The clouds were gone, the wind was still, the sun was shining.  But the proof of all that wind was in the drifts of snow.  Carrying Charlie out to the barn this morning we waded through drifts up to our knees.

The fir trees along Gulf Road are loaded down with snow, and the snow sticks to them, held by the web of needles.  The deciduous trees are coated in snow, trunk and branch. But when the breeze shakes these branches, the snow has nothing to hold on to and falls in bars, making holes in the snow below. The stream to the west of Gulf Road, which originates in our neighbor’s pond, is covered in ice and snow, the moving water hardly visible. It flows into Otego Creek which runs through Hartwick, black against the snow creeping over its banks out onto the ice above the water.  The creek is filled with chunks of ice.  I haven’t followed it on the map, but I’m pretty sure it finds its way to the Susquehanna.

So much of life here during the winter is dominated by weather. What does the world look like under cloudy skies or in the gleaming sun?  Will we go out?  Do we need the high boots? How many layers do we have to wear? For my last birthday, back in the warmth of California August, Jay bought me a wonderful shearling coat for this adventure. It was so heavy, I could barely keep it on to model it. But now I haven’t been out without it.  The outer skin stops the wind completely, and the fur keeps me warm as toast.

Dan has plowed our path to the barn, so the walk over is easy tonight.  Loads of stars.  Orion is climbing in the southeast.  It’s one of the first constellations I learned: Orion, the big and little dippers, Cassiopeia, and the Pleiades. These were the basics of the summer sky, old friends. Seeing Orion makes me miss Mom, my first and best teacher.