blog 6, undulates and conifers

    A fresh blanket of snow is nature's dare to me.  A secret dare to beat the others, to be the first footsteps.  I can't stay home when my memory yearns for bright sun, soft snow, and stillness of air.  On my way to the clearing, I walk among trees draped with globs of wet snow. The snow has stopped, but flakes fall from trees and clumps of slush splat on the ground.  From every corner of my eyes and senses, the motion and movement sparks sensation in the brain.  Movement, matter, energy.

    Through the trees, there are two deer. They watch, think, then run. No time to stand and stare. I follow them down over the ridge, but they're out of sight.  In the clearing, there is no grass, only white. After ambling over the hillside at a meditative pace, I look up and there are three other deer below the ridge. They stare, loose but nervous, not stomping or stirring. I start to move around, go around and up the hill, and watch them through the brush.  It seems my position will force them to the lower ground, and from the hill, I will have the better vantage to watch. But in a second, they ascend the hillside.  This is their ground, their hill, their way of protecting life. They graze the forest but make the ridge their home, and this is why.  I've known this; it's written on the trees and over the hills, but the motion movement of their bodies up the ridge, left to right, with caution and grace and fright.  The first two climb the face incredibly fast, nearly straight (but really side to side), like mountain goats.  The third and weakest struggles at the top, catching breathe, out of energy.  From high ground, they watch me with the better vantage.
   In the clearing, the pines and spruce remain no matter how close I come, no matter what my fingers do to them, but they sense me no less than the deer.  All over the park, snow melts and falls, and water drips from the limbs. Drip, drip, thip thup thip. My brain and forehead squeeze from the sun and reflection of white, white, bright white.  Motion, energy, neuron overload.  Do the conifers have a headache too? Do their senses overload in the snow and sunshine?

   Do trees feel buried?  Of course, they do.
   The shorter trees have their lower limbs buried in the snow, so I bend down to brush the young branches. It's a prickly species with short, sharp needles—not easy to identify either.  It's a spruce, white or blue, and there are nine others with identical needles.  None of them taller than my waist, none of them native to the park, none of them caged, except an eleventh that's two or three inches tall, barely peaking from the snow. Two other conifers grow in the upper half of open, white hillside. Near my chest in height, each has its own cage. The needles are much different—longer, rounder, softer—much more edible for undulates.  The lower limbs, where the cage doesn't reach, are stripped and eaten bare, by something, and my guess would be my friends watching from the ridge.