--Anne Frank
Lately, the constant cold and persistent snow conspire to keep us inside, even though we long to be out walking the dog or tooling around the hill—gathering twigs, checking for crocus buds, plotting for next season’s new additions. Instead, we stand at the back door and watch the birds devouring sunflower seeds, or gaze over the back garden beds from the upstairs windows, noticing all the four-footed traffic patterns in the snow-blanketed yard. We get far more woodland visitors than we realized, if all the tracks are to be believed.
There’s a deer freeway from the thicket in the northwest corner of our property, all the way down to the soccer fields, off to the southeast; the purposeful tracks cut diagonally across the
yard, with a detour to the crabapple tree, where the hoof prints become so thick that the snow’s been trampled away and green grass shows through. So far, they have eaten only the shriveled, frozen fruit, not the stems or bark from the tree. Every weekend, D religiously coats all of our plants with an ultra-smelly repellant, in an effort to keep the deer from lunching on our arborvitae and hydrangeas. Only time will tell if the animals find the odor of putrescent eggs as awful as the humans do.There are assorted other prints looping through the property as well, making us realize just how many creatures share this small acre with us. The squirrels have beat their usual paths from the acorn-laden oak to the bird feeders, which they consider theirs, not the birds’. The squirrels’ tails are fluffed out like feather boas, and the tiny wrens and chickadees likewise expand their feathery coats to trap as much body heat as possible. They hop about, waiting impatiently for the squirrels to finish, like tiny old women in big fur coats.
Last week, when the temperatures never came out of the single digits, we wondered aloud several times how the birds and other animals manage to deal with such unremitting cold. We hustle from house to garage to car, then from office or shop to car and back home, spending only minutes outside, yet complain bitterly about the numbing temperatures. It is almost unthinkable that our woodland neighbors are out in it, day and night—no warm duvet, no central heat, no L.L. Bean slippers keeping feet comfy and dry. A sobering thought, and one that leads us to look the other way when the squirrels are in the bird feeders yet again. Eat up, friends.
Still, cold or not, we have to venture out soon—there is only so much time spent indoors that a soul can abide. Even the dog agrees; she is constantly restless, pacing and grumbling. She gets too much sleep during the days and misses the time outside, surveying her realm or walking her people. She remembers those long July evenings, when there were after-dinner gambols in the yard and neighbors to visit. We remember, and miss, these activities too, but give in to mid-winter lethargy and the darkness outside by grabbing a book or the TV remote. Eventually, the dog realizes that we’ve settled in for the night and makes her bed on the ottoman between us. Soon, she’s fast asleep once more, and dreaming: her jerking back legs and stifled yips tell us she’s outside, in her dreams, chasing some foe or other. We smile knowingly, for outside, basking in the warm sun, is where we all dream of being; especially in the depths of winter, it is a primordial dream. Perhaps no one drives this point home more poignantly than Anne Frank, who wrote these words on a cold and hopeless February day in 1944:
When I looked outside, right into the depths of Nature and God, then I was happy, really happy.
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