a wintery forest Friday

A chilly day. 
The woods are waiting. 
Sunlight through branches, glistening on each snow crystal. 
Branch by branch, needle by needle.
Cold beauty.
Fresh silence. 
We move to keep warm.
Clenching our toes in and out, in and out.
Our mouths making clouds of smoke. 
Alive.
Breathing in winter.

It was a chilly morning: about -20! We made a plan: to keep moving and explore the woods! 


First, we went to our base camp to see what it looked like covered in a big blanket of snow. The jumpy horse tree still worked:

It had snowed the night before, so we had lots of opportunities to follow tracks in the snow. 

We talked about the different kinds of tracks we could see in these woods. Some animals are waddlers, some are walkers, and some are bounders. We saw lots of bounder tracks - squirrels and bunnies hopping from tree to tree. We saw tracks that looked like walker tracks - maybe a fox or a coyote. 

What's this one? A deer? Someone thought it might be a caribou.

Then we went tumbling down the hill, onto the frozen swamp.

We forged onward through the woods, some of us walking/waddling, some of us crawling. 

We explored the frozen Paradise Lake, and made some snow angel prints in the untouched snow.

We even saw some sun dog rainbows in the sky!

Then it was time to head indoors to warm up our cheeks and our toes. We shared hot chocolate, popcorn, cookies and stories together. We acted out The Mitten by Jan Brett, pretending to be woodland animals cozying up together in a huge mitten. 

When all of the animals had snuggled in, a tiny mouse settled down on a bear's nose. The bear sneezed, and all of the animals went flying out of the mitten!

Then we listened to a story about Snowflake Bentley, a man who lived in Vermont in the early 1900s and dedicated his life to photographing the beauty of a single snowflake. He's one of the first known people to photograph a snowflake. 

Then, it was back outside! This time, to the hills.

See you in February, Wild Turkeys!