To leave a trace
but not a legacy
It snowed again recently after more than a week of temps that were up to 9 degrees warmer than average. Much was melting, the trees bare. Now the snow returned making everything quiet again in its soft cold beauty, blank pages waiting to be written on with the tracks of magpie, fox, vole, dog, moose. And just in time for a full moon to illuminate—the snow moon.
There is that compulsion, when faced with a field of unmarked new snow, to want to stamp your own track on it. Especially with a full moon, the snow reflecting its silver light, bleaching the landscape into monochrome.
Or maybe it’s that we’ve been conditioned to want the world to know we were here. To walk on a field of snow like a blank page, to keep our story visible. But maybe that inclination to enjoy walking across a new field of snow is more a desire to be a part of the world than about a need to claim it for ourselves—of a delight in being part of it, to be assured …
