As Decembers go, this one is more wintery than usual.  Sub-freezing nighttime temperatures and crisp gray days have given the landscape a January like demeanor. My mid-week, mid- morning walk took me along familiar paths but brought me into some unfamiliar settings. The place seemed brand new.  First of all, the light dusting of snow from the previous night had transformed everything.  Every abandoned goldfinch nest was converted into a bowl of mounded sugar and each bright red Highbush Cranberry fruit was topped with a white dunce cap.  The neutral backdrop focused attention onto the intense red panicles of the Gray Dogwood, the subtle purples of the Blackberry stems, and the dead greens of the limp frozen Honeysuckle leaves.

  Each individual field plant now stood out as an individual. The dry winter remains of the Goldenrod and Queen Anne’s Lace each sported a personal snowcap.  If I wanted to, I could have counted the exact number of these plants in the small field adjacent to the trail – an impossible feat without their snow markers.  I continued on past with a renewed awareness that a field is a collection of individuals as opposed to an amorphous collection of stems.

 Strangely quiet, nothing stirred during the first ¼ mile.  The only sound was that of a distant train and the very faint wind-carried “cooing” of Tundra Swans out on the Detroit River. A fine cold snow was falling. Millions of the nearly invisible flakes were simultaneously striking dead leaves and twigs to create a barely audible hiss. The sound could be heard only when you stopped and held your breath for a moment.

  During one of these breathless times, another light sound was permitted into my ears.  A wispy “Ti-seep, ti-seep” betrayed the presence of two Golden-crowned Kinglets foraging in the hawthorn next to me.  These mouse-sized birds brought a startling dash of golden-yellow to the picture when they presented themselves a few feet away. A plump gray Chickadee was accompanying the kinglets and added in a repetitious “Chick-ka-dee-dee-dee” chorus to their “Ti-seep” verse.  Soon the trio worked its way past my space and was enveloped back into the snow clad shrubbery.  I was left with the hissing silence once again.

  Fresh snow not only highlights individual things but it also permits the casual observer to see things that are no longer there.  For instance, a mink had passed under the boardwalk sometime within the previous hour – his tracks were still cleanly apparent in the snow.  Last night a muskrat struggled through the forming slush ice as he worked his way along the marsh shoreline.  The ice was not sturdy enough to walk on but the water was too shallow to allow passage under it, so the ‘rat was reduced to a combination of plowing and slogging to get to his destination.  His wandering slush trail records his torturous route (here you can see the mark of his tail and his pathway as he broke through and pushed on).

  The solidifying slush ice was well compacted by the time I came upon it, but it was still in the process of crystallizing.  Intricate fissures radiated through the thickening ice at various points where the water was resisting the effects of freezing.  The dendritic patterns reminded me of cosmic gas clouds or cave art renderings of deer antlers. I took a photo of this abstract display as an excuse to get an “art shot”.  I think I’ll call it “Slush Ice Pattern No. 1.” 

  My walk had no particular destination, but the constraints of human time required me to stop at some point and return.  I elected to halt at the lotus beds opposite the low offshore island called Sturgeon Bar. I should say that I halted at what used to be the lotus bed, because the plants are long gone save for the dried broken seed pod stalks. I elected to frame another art shot and pointed my instrument of digitalization at a near shore section of the late lotus bed. I’ll call this one “Lotus Bed Pattern No. 1.”  In looking at the stark beauty of the shot- rendering what was previously a muddy brown scene into a carpet of textures -I felt no need to take no. 2.