a winter walk

so another thing i wanted to write about was the walk i took with musa a coupla days ago, out at centennial lake.
i wanted to take him out because it was 44 degrees and the sun was shining, but by the time we actually got out it was significantly colder and the sky was clouded. still off we went! the salt-bleached roads and the stillness in the air - every withered leaf frozen in place - made it feel even more wintry. there were no more than four or five cars at the park - a man with his dog, a couple of middle-aged women running. one of them balanced herself against a tree trunk in sitting-chair position - i thought at first she was sitting, but then i saw there was nothing under her.

so i took musa by the lake (face-forward in the baby bjorn, which i had to stuff him into, with fleece hat and mittens and oshkosh boots on) and pointed out to him the frozen surface, with blurred cracks on the underside and puke-green spots of frozen algae. there were arced patterns on the ice, like the water had frozen while the wind had been swirling it forward, and dustings of snow here and there, and thin puddles where the water sat still as the ice. we walked along the fence in the central part of the park, then right up to the lake in some of the fishing spots. musa gets so quiet when we go outside on walks like this - he turns into a little sponge, just soaking up everything. i love this; i am so happy he's an observer, watching and learning like that! and at one point i walked up to a mass of tangled vines - hanging from the bare trees like so much messy hair - and took off his mitten so he could touch one of the twigs wrapped in wiry tendrils: tiny crisp-orange leaves curled around the twig like a dead spider. he grasped it and shook it like babies do, smiling a little. pink nose and cheeks!!! i loved how he twisted his neck to look up at me every now and then, like he was making sure i was still there. when it's warmer i want to take him all around the lake inshallah. but he might be too big for the bjorn then... but he might be walking by then too inshallah!!

i'm going to go have a trader joe's almond croissant with a cup of honeybush and look out at the snow...