Snow berries...

Snow berries...

Yesterday was so beautiful - sunny, cold. About 3pm I put on my ski boots and walked down to the park and spent nearly an hour and a half down along the river.

In one of Wendell Berry's essays he talks about the wonder of exploring a locale in detail, over the seasons and over the years. I'm finding that in the little park across the mill race. I had intended to get across Plymouth and head for the dam, but there was so much to see and do in this little space that I never made it.

Being able to walk to the park instead of driving to it is part of the experience. Arriving on foot gives me a wholly different sense of the place and my relationship to it. I've also been surprised that the park itself is big enough and varied enough I don't tire of it.

On the way back I captured this photo.


These plump, juicy berries frozen in the woods reminded me of L's story of the ice wine grapes that they grow at the winery on Pelee Island. She says that the grapes ferment on the vine during repeated freezings and thawings in late fall. The biggest hazard to the crop at that point are the birds that come, strip the vines of fruit and get completely inebriated in the process. The idea of crows debauching themselves in a vineyard is almost too much to handle.

The only birds I saw were ducks and geese on the river, and they didn't act drunk - at least to my eye.