Out where our mud and gravel road reaches the black top, we found a dead coyote some days back when the roads briefly became passable. It was frozen solid on its haunches, as if in mid-howl, if not mid-prayer. I don’t suppose coyotes pray the way that devout human beings do, but I imagine that when hit by a car they might do as this one seems to have done– limping off the road to sit and call to the sky as the snow storms and polar air bear down. Not to anthropomorphize this already unfortunate being so much as admit my own animal nature, I imagine this act to be fairly similar to what my own grudging expression of faith might be– a willingness to look up at the starless dark and howl once I know I’m near my end. The receding snow reveals plenty of death here.
The subnivean maze of tunnels have all caved in, become filled with slush, or vanished altogether as the earth is disrobed of snow. In the wake of thaw and melt we find the detritus of days and weeks past; wood ash, grit, manure and bailing twine and the severed foot of a pig hidden by one of our dogs, gradually revealed in this whimpering exit of polar air. For now, at least. It’s the midpoint of astronomical winter– the wind and snow have ceased for the time being and an intermezzo of mud, slush, and slimy snowmelt punctuates the dormant season.
Better able to amble through the miasma of gelatinous, semi-crystalline slush than the thick powder which blanketed the landscape a few days earlier, I made my way to our plantings of elderberry and basketry willow to take a few cuttings in yesterday’s fog. While a few rows of verdant garlic and onion tips poke through the receding snow here and there, and patches and pockets of green henbit sheepishly reveal themselves from beneath the sliding masses of slush, the landscape, in terms of color, is barren this time of year. A few vases full of rooting elder and willow, sure to break dormancy in a couple weeks from their new home atop the warming shelf of our woodstove, is a small way to pierce the gloom of midwinter. Both elder and willow, or any coppicing woody crop, seem not to mind this treatment, as far from breaking dormancy as they are. The flowering branches of fruit trees can also be forced to bloom for some extra indoor finery, but fruit trees are generally more susceptible to disease intrusion when cut so early and in such damp weather, so I tend not to do this, unless I can source flowering wands from the ice-cracked limbs of wild plum, of which there are many this year. If we want flowers, the witch hazel is sure to open up shortly enough.
The hollowing crust on top the melting snow begins to take on a patina, or several patinas, dependent on where I tromp: gray-green manure ridden splotches out along the poultry barn and wagons, oak-leafed and twig strewn speckling on the windward edge of draws, clear gray puddles and rivulets in the bottomlands full of creaking sycamores and hooting owls, pink and crimson stains out near the abattoir, and splatters of nibbled honey locust pods leaking chewed-up seed alongside neat piles of rabbit shit out on the slumbering savanna of our pastures. Sprinkled under the perches of birds are the remains of winter-foraged fruit: wild grape seeds, pecked up cedar berries, and rosehip frass all appear below the perching spots of cedar wax wings. Like a recurring nightmare, tussocks of prairie grass begin to protrude again– a creeping reminder that some weeks from now the respite of dormancy will end, and the toilsome process of eking out our nourishment and the nourishment of our stock will resume. We have only begun to scratch the surface on garden plans and seed starting. A bit of greening willow and elder will suffice for the time being.
Life stirs also in the xylem of trees. The sugaring season is arriving a bit early this year, the temperatures being consistently above freezing this past week. I do not know if I’ll be collecting much sap this time around as I usually expect to start this work closer to middle February, and have plenty of higher priorities than sugar. Many of the older, best producing trees on the land here have sustained serious damage between July’s windstorms and the recent barrage of heavy ice and snow– best to retire them and put our focus on tapping the next generation, and perhaps expand into black walnut syrup.
You may recall from biology class that xylem is the cell tissue in plants which transports water and nutrients from the roots (and therefore the earth) up and out towards the buds and leaves. In woody plants, the xylem is arranged in a network known as the vascular cambium. Trees do not have muscles, and we still don’t quite know how the xylem functions, though scientists have many theories regarding pressure differentials, osmosis, intermolecular forces and cohesion-tension. I find not empirically understanding how sap flow precisely works to be soothing in a world that is increasingly demystified.
I’ve been finding birdwatching to be a less extractive way to engage with the gradually awakening dance of midwinter life. I’ve found the joy of birding to be propelled by two opposing forces; the empirical/conqueror tendency to seek, map, and complete checklists on one end, and the dissolution of self that occurs in thorny hedgerows and fog shrouded bottomlands when I cease to become separate from the landscape and reduce my impact to mere sensual observation. Birding is a reorientation of the senses, and perhaps vital work in our necessary rejoining of the ecosystem. Also, it's like Pokemon, and I just need to find a Yellow Rumped Warbler.
I don’t reckon this is the last we’ve seen of winter weather, and I would relish a bit more of the driving cold that forces me inside to rest, and keeps the pig yards from becoming full-on slop. Nonetheless this break in the season, in spite of the growing mud and small tributaries of slush melt and duck shit, is appreciated on account of our heifer, who has finally delivered her long due calf as of yesterday evening. For days, Bessie has stood, stretched and sprawled in the loafing yard alongside her own attentive mother, life clearly stirring within the swinging bulge of her abdomen. It has been sweet to watch Sugar tend to Bessie through labor, offering her steadfast and grounded bovine presence during all the contractions and restless loafing, much like a cow doula. Many nights we’ve trekked across the slick ice pathways with headlamps, our curious gaze met with the blank stares of passive, ruminating cows, but it was last night that she finally delivered, the still, frozen fog broken by yearnful mooing and bellowing, the blood-streaked bag over-full and leaking colostrum as Bessie cleaned up the wobbly little calf with her tongue.
The weeklong fog has finally cleared for a spell now, the morning broken by the shrill cries of jays fluttering along the frosted branches of the ice choked bottomlands. As the snow recedes, masses of frozen worms await the seeking beaks of robins, and life begins to stir, even among the death and detritus offered up by the passing intensity of deep winter. Perhaps there is some balance between the hours-old calf and the slumping carcass at the edge of our road, or maybe I only see it that way in my own useless, howling prayers, made deep in the disorder of a cruel season.