Garden Walk

About 8 o'clock. It's light but the sun hasn't yet risen above the hills across the Lockatong. Intended purpose: a short walk, being with myself and the garden. The ground is frozen like iron; can't break the ice on the pond, not with this stick. The wood chip paths hold the snow, and crunch loudly under foot with a sound like fingernails scraping gently across a blackboard.

The engineer and planner keeps coming to the fore. Troubling thoughts of what that change in grade will do to the flow of water, where exactly to make that curve in the yet-to-be stone wall. It takes a discipline to turn off the noise of garden planning and just listen, be, feel. Cold, cold. Runny nose. Did I bring kleenex? Hard to believe all this life is in that hard earth; spring will come.

The rising sun is hidden in the trees. But light changes faster than I think, penetrates the trees at a low angle, opening up the woods. Cluttered trees suggest crowds of rough, rude crosses.

Few birds. The clatter of crows. This is woodpecker land, but no woodpeckers this early. Muted sounds of invisible finches.

I may as well be blind. On this frozen morning the garden is all about feeling - the cold, the hard ground, the crunch of footsteps, a few bird calls, and silence.