Keeping "track" of winter

In the midst of a harsh New York winter, it's easy to plunge as low as the temperatures. As my back's soreness increases from ceaseless shoveling, and my senses tire of the endless stream of cloudy, gray days, I know my sagging spirits need a boost. Of course, nature has answered my call--and provided me with a brilliantly sunny morning which beckons me out into the sparkling glare of newly fallen snow.

The Channel 7 meteorologist predicts that the weather gauge on my potting bench will rise to near 40 degrees today, a veritable paradise of tropical proportions when compared with recent temperatures, and I am making the most of it. My first order of business is to provide my poor little housebound Shih Tzu with some much-needed exercise. As soon as I pop out the back door, hundreds of miniscule markings mar the snowy canvas covering my patio, a sign that the birds have made good use of the birdfeeder hanging just outside our kitchen window. I glance around, following the calls of these winged warriors. The songs bursting from the tiny feathered breasts sound joyful. They are happy, I think, to have a reprieve from the harsh weather.

As we make our way around the back of the house, a playful succession of paw prints create a pattern in the pristine white, and I gaze around, trying to determine who left these marks. I decide that the equally spaced, matched-set of prints are the reveal of a critter who jumps through snowdrifts: An adventurous rabbit perhaps? A frolicking deer? I take a picture to document its course. And while I snap away, I notice that the stylistic wrought iron "sun" I've tacked to the front of the woodshed is just "rising" over a snowdrift (far right): the symbol of a bright new day.

Tomorrow it will snow again, and another half-foot will join the existing feet of winter white, piling ever-higher. But I won't fret. I'll smile, knowing Spring to be a mere 36 days away. I'll watch the whirl of snow whipping around my windowsill, and think of the haiku poem I just created:

Snowflakes drift
Endless expression
Of God's love