18 Spring in the Snow

In Which I Have a Good Look at Winter and Find Spring in the Snow With Christmas over, the winter became serious. The snows deepened, the wind blew, the temperatures dropped until the air snapped and talked. Never had humanity seemed so far away as it did in those cold still months of January, February, and March. I wandered the snowy crags, listening to the language of the birds by day and to the noises of the weather by night. The wind howled, the snow avalanched, and the air creaked. I slept, ate, played my reed whistle, and talked to Frightful.

To be relaxed, warm, and part of the winter wilderness is an unforgettable experience. I was in excellent condition. Not a cold, not a sniffle, not a moment of fatigue. I enjoyed the feeling that I could eat, sleep and be warm, and outwit the storms that blasted the mountains and the subzero temperatures that numbed them. It snowed on. I ploughed through drifts and stamped paths until eventually it occurred to me that I had all the materials to make snowshoes for easier travelling. Here are the snowshoe notes: I made slats out of ash saplings, whittling them thin enough to bend. I soaked them in water to make them bend more easily, looped the two ends together, and wound them with hide. With my penknife I made holes an inch apart all around the loop.

I strung deer-hide crisscross through the loops. I made a loop of hide to hold my toe and straps to tie the shoes on. When I first walked in these shoes, I tripped on my toes and fell but by the end of the first day I could walk from the tree to the gorge in half the time. I lived close to the weather. It is surprising how you watch it when you live in it. Not a cloud passed unnoticed, not a wind blew untested. I knew the moods of the storms, where they came from, their shapes and colours. When the sun shone, I took Frightful to the meadow and we slid down the mountain on my snapping-turtle-shell sled. She really didn't care much for this. When the winds changed and the air smelled like snow, I would stay in my tree, because I had got lost in a blizzard one afternoon and

had had to hole up in a rock ledge until I could see where I was going. That day the winds were so strong I could not push against them, so I crawled under the ledge; for hours I wondered if I would be able to dig out when the storm blew on. Fortunately I only had to push through about a foot of snow. However, that taught me to stay home when the air said "snow". Not that I was afraid of being caught far from home in a storm, for I could find food and shelter and make a fire anywhere, but I had become as attached to my hemlock house as a brooding bird to her nest, Caught out in the storms and weather. I had an urgent desire to return to my tree, even as The Baron Weasel returned to his den, and the deer, to their copse. We all had our little "patch" in the wilderness. We all fought to return there. I usually came home at night with the nuthatch that roosted in a nearby sapling. I knew I was late if I tapped the tree and he came out. Sometimes when the weather was

icy and miserable, I would hear him high in the trees near the edge of the meadow, yanking and yanking and flicking his tail, and then I would see him wing to bed early. I considered him a pretty good barometer, and if he went to his tree early, I went to mine early too. When you don't have a newspaper or radio to give you weather bulletins watch the birds and animals. They can tell when a storm is coming. I called the nuthatch "Barometer", and when he holed up. I holed up, lit my light, and sat by my fire whittling or learning new tunes on my reed whistle. I was now really into the teeth of winter, and quite fascinated by its activity. There is no such thing as a "still winter night". Not only are many animals running around in the creaking cold, but the trees cry out and limbs snap and fall, and the wind gets caught in a ravine and screams until it dies. One noisy night I put this down: There is somebody in my bedroom. I can hear small exchanges of greetings and little

feet moving up the wall. By the time I get to my light all is quiet. Next day There was something in my room last night, a small tunnel leads out from my door into the snow. It is a marvellous tunnel, neatly packed, and it goes from a dried fern to a dump of moss. Then it turns and disappears. I would say, mouse. That night I kept an ember glowing and got a fast light before the visitor could get to the door. It was a mouse– a perfect little white-footed deer mouse with enormous black eyes and tidy white feet. Caught in the act of intruding, he decided not to retreat, but came towards me a few steps. I handed him a nut meat. He took it in his fragile paws, stuffed it in his cheek, flipped, and went out his secret tunnel. No doubt the tunnel leads right over