On Thursday, the temperature rose about twenty degrees (making it just a hair above freezing), and the setting sun knocked on the living room window and asked me to come out and play. I bundled up, and my cat and I went out to see what we could see.
A few days earlier, we had gotten another coating of ice, and shortly after that, about a half-inch of snow. The wind had died down for a short time, and the end result was a beautiful splatter of animal footprints, all frozen in time like so many fossils.
Among them, as far as I could identify, were juncos and blue jays, whose prints centered on the patio and under birdfeeders; the wookiee (my cat), whose larger-than-average footprints look like a small dog’s patrolling every corner of our yard; rabbits, who remain fully hidden during the day, but evidently scuttle around the yard when no one’s looking; and squirrels.
The squirrels took me a while to identify, because they were in little clusters of four, each cluster spaced anywhere from 6 to 12 inches apart. I suppose they must have hopped. Or maybe they weren’t squirrel prints after all.
In any case, as the wookiee and I wandered around the yard, following footprints and chasing each other across the smooth drifts of snow, I turned around and traced with my eyes just where I had gone that evening.
I saw my footprints to the mailbox and back to the patio, to the garden swing and around the back of the tool shed, a group of bootprints where I had stooped to examine the squirrel prints under the pussywillow, and a line of footprints smashed through the icy layer parallel to the wookiee’s when I chased him back to the house.
The snow makes it clear where we’ve been. What it doesn’t as effectively reveal is where we’re going.
Quo vadis? Wohin gehst du? Where are you going? In whichever language, it’s a valid question. Our footprints, whether traced in snow, in carbon, or even in emotion, will tell a candid story about us when we’re gone. If we choose carefully the direction we’re heading now, our footprints will leave a valuable path for the ones to follow.
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So I knew that I was supposed to wait awhile until your blog would actually be up, and it seems that I have waited too long a while. I really like this post! When you told me the name of your blog I never really stopped to think much about the title, because it seems I have grown lazy. Though it turns out I never did need to stop and think about it. Your story about the snow is a perfect example.
ReplyDeleteAlso, it seems that we both have Star Wars pets now. You have a wookie and I have a mylock. She sounds just like one when she's playing with her toys, making grunts and groans that I previously only thought possible out of science fiction movies. It turns out the sound effects guys just must have recorded their dogs at home.
--Angela