Stories etched in the snow

Snow tracks tell interesting stories. Whenever I open my front door in the morning, I can tell if somone walked by my house earlier. The large bootprints belong to the men who check every morning to see if there is snow to be removed. The small, delicate tracks with triangular toes belong to a woman who had come to visit me unannounced (I still don't know who it is). I can see the tyre tracks of the the smallor large vehicles that pass by. I've found that my favourite sneakers have carved a New Balance logo in white.

Exactly one year ago, I woke up to find some curious little prints leading from my front door to my car. Earlier, I was told that there were foxes living in the forest in which my house is nestled. I hadn't seen any foxes myself, so I wasn't scared at the idea. In this country, it's illegal to kill, feed or otherwise attempt to tame wild animals.

Since then, they trimmed the trees in the forest, because storms had weakened the trunks of many of the trees over the years. I now have a midi-forest, and I was sad, but I was assured that it was for my own safety and protection.

This morning I woke up and saw some prints under my window. Fox paw prints? Then I noticed that the ice was melting and that the icicles were dripping onto the bed of snow below the eaves of my roof. I traced the the small holes in the snow to the landing that separated my house from the street.

If the prints I saw last year were melted icicles, then what made those indentations that I saw under my car?