The Pond is Frozen

I'm sure the ice is not thick enough to walk on, but the grass on the way makes a satisfying crunch. You would never guess that at least a hundred little fish live under that ice!

The young deer who live here are big enough to hang out in the field now. One of this years' crop seems to be the blackish kind. Especially in certain light and angles of view, it looks black all over its blanket, the area from head to tail, on top, where the deer would get wet if rain fell.

It may be a lot of long coarse guard hairs I see, or a lack of downy undercoat. I have seen this type of deer with clumps of fur falling out in patches. I wonder if the black top kind of deer is more vulnerable to this condition, or if it is the result. I watch these deer grow from this teenage size to full grown and sometimes this color thing seems to shift, with the deer looking ragged for a while, then recovering after a few months.

Alura the neighbor cat checks out the field and pond in her daily rounds. Today she sits for a while, peering into the pond. Her long and fluffy fur colors are this exquisite mix of white like the frost, blond like the dead grass of November, and grey like the trees. Her reflection in the clear ice is mirror sharp against blue sky in the full midday sun without a cloud in the sky. Despite the sun, the pond stays frozen all day.

Night falls early up north and I hear a fox cry out in the dark nearby. It is a chilling combination of a bark and a shriek.

"Astonishment is the proper response to reality."— Terence McKenna