Snow Lotus: Exploring the Eternal Moment

The Snow Lotus

The Snow Lotus . . . its aim is always and consistently to be that of which it speaks. THOMAS MANN It's a singular season, ripe with old scat, and The Reverend is attentive. The only time he'll allow me to surge past him on skis is when he pauses to vigorously sniff at the winter's accumulation of wolf droppings. I'm pleasantly surprised at how many there are. It's March 2ist, and we have heard the local pack singing only four times since early November, but the trail is peppered with dark, furry stools. Businesslike, but rushed—for I quickly glide ahead— Rev sprinkles his scent on each collage before sprinting up and blowing by me to compulsively regain the lead. 5 "It's your cousins!" I yell at his rump. But he's intent on this bonanza of spoor and pays no heed. In the house he studies my subtlest nuance of expression and mood, perking his ears at the sound of my voice. In the woods he's fixated on the odor of his cousins and the joy of running. I'm just the big doghe lopes with. It's a day after the vernal equinox, officially spring, and the snow is crusted and durable. I can ski anywhere— cutting through bogs, darting between black spruce and tamaracks, or abandoning the trail on a sudden whim to skate across a beaver pond—and over "deer berry" depressions . More scat. The clusters of dark brown deer pellets have been absorbing the increasingly potent rays of the latewinter sun, and thus heated, have sunk below the surface of the snow to form circular pockets, like nests of tiny eggs. These are seeds of winter's dissolution; bare ground or open water will appear beneath these droppings soon. Actually, several days of warm, sunny weather have created snowfree patches on the trail and around the baseof nearly every tree. At one point a pair of ruffed grouse startle us as they burst into the air from sanctuary under a balsam fir. They have been nestled in a swath of sun-dappled dry grass and clover. The Rev briefly charges off in the direction of their flight. He hasn't had the chance to jump a grouse since last autumn's hunting season. There are a few puffs of cumulus cloud overhead—long absent from the wintry atmosphere—and the morning sky seems particularly bright and blue. If I were looking only upward it would be easy to imagine we were already blessed by May or July. But this time of year the ground is far more interesting. The snowpack is hard enough to support me, but a recent veneer faithfully preserves everyone else's tracks. I note where a squirrel leaped off the lower branches of a white spruce, punching a small crater in the snow; its subsequent footprints are low-impact impressions, so fine that I can discern the mark of each toe. The Snow Lotus 6 I see the chickenlike talon tracks of a grouse, one step set precisely in front of the other, and touching—as if the prints were rolled off a strip of adhesive and stretched out in the snow. The crust is armored to withstand even the the sharp hooves of deer, and I ski over a chopped-upportion of trail where at least two whitetails danced a stutter step without breaking through, then leaped off into the alder brush. The prints are fresh. Perhaps they heard me and Revapproaching . We're not renowned for stealth—especially with skis buffing flinty snow. I see the tracks of hare, foxes, voles, and of course wolves, plus the sheerest gravure of all—the tandem sweep of raven wings, like arcing brush strokes on a crystalline canvas. They barely show up on this snowpack, ephemeral feather swipes that strikingly evoke the grace of liftoff. I recall the first time I noticed such marks in the snow. For a moment I was baffled, couldn't make sense of the weird artistry. Then I laughed with the sudden delight of recognition. Wing tracks!—the traceless spoor of flight made visible. Not far from the splatter of hoofprints Idouble-pole down a short hill, digging in for speed, forcing The Rev to kick into high gear. I'm right on his tail, chanting "Hup! Hup! Hup!" just to keep him wired and provoke a race. He beats...