Sleeping underwater with the maple leaves

See Paul's blog for photos of the fantastic snow here in the Springs today. It started yesterday, later than we'd expected it after the big drum-beats of the weather forecasters so excited to have a "major snow event" to talk about. First some stray swirling flakes, their density gradually increasing, and before I knew it the ice covering the fish pond was covered itself. I thought about the fish down there in the growing dark; just an hour before I'd seen one, sleepless, wandering slowly around under the skim of ice. I wonder if the darkness settling over them -- like a very early nightfall -- sent them all into their winter state of suspended animation at the bottom?

More snow as night fell for us, and we left the outdoor lights on so we could look, and kept poking our heads out to take the measure of it, but truly it didn't seem that much when we went to bed. By morning though -- extravaganza of ornament! Sheer white stretching on through the back garden, everything silent, nothing moving but bluejays, cardinals and woodpeckers. You couldn't tell just how deep it really was until you got outside in it -- which proved to be a daunting project, getting the doors open, stepping out, and immediately sinking in to our knees. Two feet, thirty inches? Now the fish are far down under the thick white that makes their kingdom dark, sleeping there among all those maples leaves I didn't have time to get out of the water.

Thus a snowbound day: reading, writing a little, messing around online. cooking, a nap, and -- just when it seemed that torpor would overcome us both -- bouts of snow shoveling. The body wants to slow down, like the goldfish settling themselves in -- and good thing the body then refuses, and wants to kick up its heels. Or is that the head?