"You cannot walk too early in new-fallen snow” ~ Thoreau

Virgin snow lies before me.

Our weather this winter has been, well, quirky. Snowfalls have been sporadic, and have been followed by periods of weather just warm enough, and brief enough, to partially melt the new accumulation. But only partially. The inevitable return to cold weather then left us with ice-covered walkways and driveways when the snow melt re-froze. A white Christmas was followed by a couple weeks of brutally cold weather around the New Year. We take in stride the occasional dip into negative digits for a day or so, but this time the frigid air stayed and stayed. It was downright nasty. Not a good time for any outdoor activities. By mid-January I was firmly in the grip of an intense case of cabin fever.

A heavy snowfall on January 17 proved to be a blessing in disguise. It forced the cancellation of our plans to enjoy a night of good fiddle music in Portland by the Don Roy Trio, but adorned the landscape with a fresh coat of light, powdery snow. The sun came out the next day, giving us our first truly beautiful winter day. I threw my snowshoes in the truck and headed for the Kennebunk Plains.

It had been a couple of years since the stars and planets had all been aligned properly so I could get out for a little snowshoeing. It was always too cold, or too windy, or we had too much snow, or we had too little snow, or I had other things to do, or...well, you get the idea.
 
When I got to the small parking area on Maguire Road I was a tad dismayed  to see that someone had preceded me; I had hoped to be the first one on the trail. No other vehicle was present, however, just the tracks of one, and no other human being was in sight. Whatever. I'll take it. I strapped on my shoes, crossed the road, and headed north across the open country.

When I got about halfway to the woods on the far side of the field I was delighted to see that whomever it was who had beaten me to the punch had turned around. From then on I had the pleasure of walking on virgin snow.

There really is something special about being the first to walk a trail after a snowfall. There's a sense of elation that comes with being the first person on the ground in fresh territory. You feel as though the woods, the fields, the trail are your exclusive domain, at least for the moment. A selfish feeling, for sure, but so be it.

I recently ran across this gem from the journal of the estimable Henry David Thoreau in which he expressed, much better than I, his sense of joy about being out in similar conditions:

 You cannot walk too early in new fallen snow--to get 

the sense of purity, novelty & unexploredness.

It is always a real treat to encounter a passage from a great writer in which he or she puts their verbal finger on the exact concept I've been trying to get my head around. It makes it seem as though we've all been looking at something with the same set of eyes and with the same brain.* One thing I particularly love about this Thoreau quote is his word "unexploredness." I doubt you'll find it in any dictionary, but it conveys his meaning quite effectively.

I was out and about early enough that although the sun was shining brightly, and warming the air rapidly, the trees and bushes still wore the mantles of fresh snow they had acquired the night before. In addition to adding an extra dimension of beauty to the scene, the layer of snow also muffled much of the sound. State Route 99, a fairly busy road, runs parallel to where I was walking, but traffic that morning was sparse enough that for much of the time I enjoyed walking in relative silence--a state that is mighty difficult to experience these days. The distinctive WHUMP of snow falling on snow as the sun warmed the pines was the sound I heard most frequently.

 

By the time I got about three-quarters of the way around the three mile perimeter of the area my legs and lungs began to remind me how little exercise I'd had recently. I contemplated taking a bit of a shortcut and going cross-lots back to my truck, but talked myself into pressing on...although I will admit that I took more than a couple of rest stops in the final few hundred yards. I worked up a healthy sweat, but it felt good. Although later in the day my body protested a bit, the outing did wonders to refresh my spirits.

 

And I never did see another person. In fact, I saw no other living creatures. The one disappointing aspect of this outing was the total absence of bird life. I did not see Bird One. Not so much as a Crow or a Blue Jay or a Chickadee. Zip. None. Nada. Zilch. Nary a bird.

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Just over a month later, on February 18, we had another smallish snowfall. It dropped 9" at our house, but later that same afternoon the weather turned warmer again and we lost a lot of the new accumulation. Unseasonably high temperatures were forecast for the middle of the following week so I again figured that I needed to grab the opportunity to get out for a bit of an expotition (as Pooh would say). This time I headed for the "For All Forever" Preserve, a newish property managed by the Kennebunk Land Trust.
 
The snow conditions were not as favorable for this jaunt, and this time I followed the tracks of a couple of other people for the entire walk. But I never did see them. Whereas the trek at the Plains involved making a circuit around a large, nominally circular open area (which is bisected by a road), the course at "For All Forever" is a balloon, or lollipop, trail. That is, the trail begins with a longish (half-mile?) straight section through woods, and then goes around the perimeter of a sizable (approx. 5-6 acres) field. The Mousam River defines the northeastern edge of the field (on the left in the photo below).

East Point Sanctuary, Biddeford Pool, ME, May 2016

In the spring this is a marvelous birding spot! On a couple of visits last May we were delighted with both the variety of species and number of individual birds we saw: Rose-breasted Grosbeaks, Cardinals, Scarlet Tanagers, Yellow Warblers, numerous other species of warbler, Bobolinks, Indigo Buntings, and more. The brushy border that separates field from river provides particularly good habitat for songbirds; on one of our visits it was alive with Common Yellowthroats. It is always a treat to get a decent look at one of these gorgeous, but often secretive, little buggers. Their "witchety-witchety-witchet" song can often be heard even when the birds do not reveal themselves to human eyes. They are endearing little guys; they're among our very favorite birds.

Unfortunately, the preserve is also badly infested with ticks! This keeps a lot of birders from going there, and keeps me from returning in warm weather.

In February, of course, not many songbirds were in evidence, and ticks were not a factor. Happily, the place was by no means devoid of bird life. Shortly after I began my walk around the perimeter of the field, a beautiful Red-tailed Hawk took off from the trees along the river. He flew across the clearing in front of me, moving to my right as he flapped his way towards the woods on the opposite side. I reveled in the opportunity to admire his beauty, if only for a matter of a minute or so. He soon disappeared over the trees, heading in the general direction of the parking lot where I'd left my truck.

Once he was out of view I turned my head to the left, towards the river, and was rewarded with an even better sight: a fully-mature Bald Eagle, flying just over the treetops. He was tracking the course of the river eastward, heading downstream; if he maintained the same flight path he may well have eventually cruised right over our house.

I had even less time to admire his beauty than I'd had with the Red-tail. I have long since learned that one must take these things as they come; any and all chances to view such marvelous creatures, no matter how brief, must be cherished for what they are. Even though I was again only a few hundred yards from Route 99, the area has a feeling of remoteness about it. Somehow this made the sightings even sweeter. I felt as if I had been granted privileged access to the raptors' world. It was exhilarating in the way that only close encounters with the natural world can be.


It had been mid-afternoon when I began this walk, and by the time I completed my circuit of the field the sun was lowering and the shadows lengthening. All good things must come to an end; with some reluctance I made one final check of the open field in the vain hope of seeing another raptor, then turned and headed back up the string of the balloon toward my truck.

++++++++++

Since taking these walks our quirky weather has continued. Two days after my trek at "For All Forever" the predictions of unseasonable warmth held true. Most of the new snow retreated in the face of temperatures in the high 60s. But March is not yet upon us. No doubt we will be graced with a few more snowfalls before spring truly arrives. I hope I might have another opportunity or two to heed Henry's good advice before starting to think about mowing the lawn or planting the garden.

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*I explored this phenomenon quite a bit in an earlier post about the writing of Edward Howe Forbush.

The Thoreau quote comes from his journal of 21 February 1854. I found it in: Daily Observations: Thoreau on the Days of the Year, edited by Steve Grant, with engravings by Barry Moser. Published by University of Massachusetts Press, in cooperation with the Thoreau Society. 2005.

Explorations on Shank's Mare 1: The Eastern Trail in Snow

For the past year or so Sally and I have made walking our primary form of physical activity. Throughout the late summer and fall we greatly enjoyed discovering and exploring trails in the area that were new to us. I'll write about some of these in future posts. One of our long-time favorites, though is the Eastern Trail that connects Kittery in the south with South Portland in the north. (The ET is, in turn, part of the East Coast Greenway, a complex of roads and trails that stretches from Key West, FL to Calais, ME, at the Canadian border.) The Eastern Trail presently consists of a combination of on-road routes and off-road trail sections. We're fortunate to have a nice 6.1 mile off-road section that connects Kennebunk and Biddeford within easy striking distance of our house.

We've been enjoying our pedestrian excursions thoroughly and hated the thought of having to suspend them through the winter months when all the trails are covered with snow. The solution: snowshoes for each other for Christmas! Yeah! Bring it, Ol' Man Winter! We're ready!

But then...Christmas arrived and there was nary a speck of snow on the ground. The 5"-6" we got before Thanksgiving had long since disappeared. The new snowshoes remained in their boxes, unopened. When we did get snow, on the first weekend of the month, it was only a few inches, and was immediately followed by freezing rain. Crust everywhere; no nice, soft powder.

Not to worry. It's January and this is Maine; more snow arrived this past week. Again, not so very much, but enough to inspire us to mount an expotition today to break in the new snowshoes. There were even a few flurries in the air as we headed for Biddeford and the upper terminus of the Kennebunk-to-Biddeford section of the Eastern Trail.

It took us both a few minutes to get accustomed to the new appendages, and to do some tweaking of the bindings. But after that--man, what great fun! Why didn't we do this a long time ago? It felt so good just to be out and about after spending too much time indoors lately. The thought of being able now to explore the woods in winter, to check out all the animal tracks, to perhaps catch some glimpses of the animals that make the tracks, and to see what birds inhabit our woods in the winter, is very liberating!

The snowfall picked up quite a bit while we were walking, which added another layer of beauty to the scene. Sally noted that it was like walking in a snow globe.

There were not very many birds out today; just a few Blue Jays (which seem to be ubiquitous this winter) and a few small things fluttering about in a distant tree, too small and too far away to identify without binoculars. Lots and lots of animal tracks, though--time to brush up on my track identification skills!

Mostly what we saw were squirrel tracks, with probably a few rabbit tracks mixed in. But then there were others that we suspect might indicate the presence of Woozles! 

We started our walk at the trailhead in the parking lot of the Southern Maine Medical Center in Biddeford. From there we trekked southward for a little over half an hour, and turned around at the Arundel town line.There are markers along the trail at quarter-mile intervals, so we're able to figure that we did about two miles total. Not so very far, but not bad for an initial shake-down venture testing out new gear. We certainly felt evidence of our exertions in our legs, knees, and ankles!

We ended up feeling tired but exhilarated. Can't wait to get out for many more winter walks!

p.s. If you don't know what a Woozle is, and have never been on an expotition to look for one, you clearly had a deprived childhood! I recommend that you rectify the situation by consulting the works of A.A. Milne at your earliest opportunity!