EDIT – so much for winter being on its way out – it has started bucketing snow here in the late afternoon. We probably have an 1/8th or 1/4 inch already – whoops!
Spring has not yet arrived, but Winter is definitely on its way out
In Carlisle, this weekend the temperatures have been in the low 30’s and it has been raining in a desultory way off and on all weekend. I got a set of snow shoes for my birthday this year (thank you Marty & Allison! They got them for me as part of my cross country drive emergency kit. Fortunately they were not needed and in fact, the only place that really had snow is eastern Mass.)
I decided to try the snow shoes out before the season ended because the snow is starting to get pretty rotten and slushy. Next to my parent’s property is Spencer Brook which is a slow moving brook and marsh land with a lot of streams feeding into it – in a slow meandering way. The water level in recent years is up from when I was kid due to some beaver dam activity downstream. Some years when I was kid, it was pretty dry – but not this year.
Good fun tramping around even with the overcast and light rain. I only fell through into standing water once! (turns out LL Bean boots retain water quite nicely if it pours in over the top – then they act like a Jacque Cousteau wetsuit once the freezing water warms up – lol!)
I saw quite a bit of animal track – many rabbits and in one area, what I think was a Coyote track – it was leaping along and belly flopping into the soft snow. It clearly did not think much of this idea because it quickly looped back around to firmer ground.
Over near the fields along the road, there were cross country ski tracks and snow shoers like me – but their tracks were old.
It is definitely still winter but you can tell that it is on its way out – the ground is still frozen rock hard but mud is our future!
