Starting down the path in quiet solitude, I am immediately surrounded by the optimistic conversation of chickadees. I savor the punctuation of my footfalls in the snowy crust. My eyes begin to clear and focus. I slow down. Patches of snow and ice cling to the water's surface, forming floating white islands around naked tree snags.
Branches reach upward as if frozen in some earlier agony.
A stick, holding still in the water appears to be moving downstream as the wind blows one way, the current flows another. Surface waters chop cheerfully inland with the breeze, talkative, tossing glints of light here and there, while the submerged grasses undulate secretly, silently away, toward the sea. Then come sounds. At the bend, the inlet is filled with a distant low growling. In this chilly misty world, I cannot smell it or see it, yet the presence is huge.