A Lunch Time Walk in the Snow

At lunch time, a colleague and I went for a walk around the building where we work. The track is 1 mile long and since the snow storm that hit this weekend, it has not been cleared - after all, what mad person would want to make a trek in the snow?







We trudged through the snow, which piled up in big drifts - the light areas had about a foot of snow, but some drifts were much deeper. We captured these images using a camera-phone, hence the low resolution.







Some grey birds made strange electronic chirping sounds - can't figure out what they were yet. They jumped from bush to bush, poking around at the last berries of the season. Only squirrel tracks marked the path over the thick undisturbed snow trail.







A fat black squirrel sat in a willow arch over us, and seemed to wonder why someone would be out on the trail in this snow. The sight of fluffy weed heads, and talk of yurts in Algonquin Park made us think of winter camping and fires in the woods.







Even with North America's busiest highway humming away about 60 feet away from us on one leg of the walk, it was easy to forget we were in a major city and easy to imagine being way up north somewhere... Away from computers and closer to some ice-fishing and campfires. We needed to clear at least a couple of piles of snow over 10 feet high, compliments of the parking lot snowplows.







With all of the dead standing firewood looming about, and spruce trees, a good shelter was just waiting to be assembled. The birch tree with crumbling, flaking bark was waiting to supply me with tinder for a fire.





Cheers,

Mungo