Yesterday I went for a walk because it was sunny and clear blue skies out, and I walked to where only I can walk and that just means on my street because the water in the back has melted and there’s no more ice bridge to the back 50. I walked down the old Cow Hough to see the river down by the hydro-electric plant, and hoo boy that stuff is running high. We got lots of rain and the consequent melt on Monday, and I’ve never seen it this high, the falls this white and raging. I hiked down the little hill and the water lapped furiously, filled with every kind of tree part, from logs to sticks, swirling in odd patterns, the center roiling away. I kept scanning the dark water’s surface, always thinking I would spot death, or someone fighting death in the rapids. But all was as it was.

I walked up and over to the other view point, because it is a better view of the falls. Slushy layers of ice with tire tracks in it lingered. I caught a whiff of something rank and pulled my scarf up over my nose. Fish? Old fish guts? I stood on the vista point, gathering in the rapids, and the smell grew stronger. My glance turned down to the hilly slope in front of me, and there was the answer: at least 4 or 5 deer carcasses, lumped one on top of each other, ribs bones splayed but legs and hindquarters still fleshed out. The hunter must have taken the center cuts and dumped the rest. It was awful to see, the sun shining on the flies that swarmed the heap. The roiling water below. The horrid smell.

Death is usually there, when you are looking, just not so very obvious.

This morning's sunrise was slow, and the sky retained that lit up deep blue for a while. In the west the moon lingered, bright and unrelenting at 6 am. Not yellow but bright white, shining on the large crytalline snow flakes that poke and jut out on all the trees, like little stars fallen out of the sky.

Now the sky is a pale eggshell blue, and a glimmer of peach lines the horizon. The birds are all gone and the empty feeder just dangles in the windless air. They have been eating voraciously, especially since they are now double in population. The redwing blackbirds are back in their usual flocks, the pale yellow strip on their wings dull and wan. We saw starlings, of coure, and some grackles, which I am sort of amazed by. They are gorgeous: glossy iridescent black, streamlined and boat tailed, with a piercing dull yellow eye above a menacing black beak. They don't look like you would want to mess with them at all. And the sparrows come and go with the purple finches (or are they house finches, I can never tell) stippling the snow beneath the feeder, searching for millet on the ground.

Apparently it's breeding time for skunks, and when I learned that I realized, it dawned on me: so that's why there is a dead skunk on the road every five miles. They are on the prowl.

Finally, after a few days of sun and warmth, the thick shell of ice and snow--over a feet deep in places--had receded and patches of greenish brown started to show again. You could tell the deer were pleased to find uncovered ground to hoof and paw. The pond in the back that had finally frozen over enough for me to start shoveling in hopes of skating (I still don't even have skates!) was starting to return to liquid, in waves of melt off I could see from the kitchen. It felt like life. A woman I know who brings her artisanal cheeses to the winery said excitedly: you can smell the earth! And I agreed that just the night before I noticed the smell of wet dirt, that fills you with such force after the sterile smell of ice for so long.

And now, now it is snowing again. The green patches are white again. The apple tree and the roof of the empty feeder dangling from a branch are lined with fluffy snow. It's no longer magical, no longer a thrill. And the realization that we have quite a ways to go before the green comes back stabs at you. It's a pain, really, like when you look at a picture of summer how green it all seems.