Snow Walk: Stream-of-Consciousness

It’s a snowy glade. 

The sun dripping in streaks of white, or silver, or cream. And every dead branch is cloaked in a white sheath--whiteness clings and melts and crystallizes over everything. They look asleep under a blanket as if the snow were warming, providing protection from cold winter winds. 

Going up the hill it levels out onto small plateaus with spring pools, pools from springs sliding down the hill that ripple the snow into humps and hillocks. Snow is untouched save for the leaves that have fallen, broken sticks, and springs cutting through the snow to bubble up and sun warms snow. 

Glisten, 

sparkle, 

and little clumps of snow cling to smallest of trees.

Everything is silent save for the wind, sort of building pressure, jostling and rustling leaves. 

Slip and slide down hill, treading untrodden snow and as tree limbs go past, new glades form; you see places with tracks and no tracks. Ducking under snowy boughs and coming out on other side to a new opening all filled with sunlight, turning from silver to gold as clouds roll away. 

The snow makes a sound underfoot. Soft and powdery, makes a munching sound. Like a giant eating a bologna sandwich. Crunching, that’s the cliché. The annoying thing about clichés is that they’re so often right. It’s because they’re perfect, that’s why everyone uses them all the time. Not because they’re bad, but because they’re perfect. They’re clichés, they’re the best. 

Walking paths again, rubber boots sinking into the snow, very nice indeed. Dim shadows, wind kicking up gusts of snow that glide across the surface of the ground like spirits, swirling, effervescent spirits of light and shadow. Snow spirits, the ghost of snowflakes, icicle fairies, something snow obliterated. Kicking up mimics of snow spirits, 

oh! 

Plunging unexpectedly into drifts. Analyzing tracks on the ground, trying to pinpoint what on earth they are. The embalmed bodies of streams motionless in the snow--gray, sooty, broken. Snow is magical, but frost is what really transforms the world. Snow is nice too, though. Nice. Very nice.