The back pasture

Sick of my dogs yet? Bear with me! :)

I have taken two really lovely walks to our back pasture this week. This is the pasture that borders the River Beaudette that empties into the mighty St. Lawrence. I figured it had to have flooded in the thaw last week, and indeed it had. Although the waters have receded now, the river is still quite swollen. According to the locals, January thaws are normal here, but January thaws with such an incredible amount of snow are NOT normal, hence all the flooding.

The entire back pasture is covered in a layer of ice, well up into the woodlot. I think if I cleared thes now, I'd have a pretty good hockey-arena sized skating rink back there. I think the water in the pasture must have been three feet deep when the river burst its banks. You can tell how high it got by the very cool ice formations around the bases of trees and bushes.

The water rose, there was a freeze, the water dropped, and sheets of ice were left around the bottoms of everything. I think if you click on the photos, you'll get a larger version and better detail:


Tristan checks it out:


Sophie emerges from the undergrowth in the woodlot. That's more ice on the right, at the base of the bush, and it's all ice underfoot:



I also discovered that some truly large trees fell over in the windstorm. What a shame! Can you say FIREWOOD?

The base of the trees. The ground was wet and thawed, the winds came, the trees blew over:



Tristan investigates one fallen tree:



Sophie checks things out too:



Our dogs LOVE LOVE LOVE to run:



Meanwhile, back in the woodlot, Gooberhead bursts forth from the trees:



And the dogs sniff out some frozen turkey poop in the field:



Words can't express how lovely it was Wednesday, the day I of course DIDN'T have my camera on me. The sky was blue, the air was cold, the snow was sparkling like extra-cold snow does, and the sun was at its late afternoon position, throwing beautiful golden light on everything. The chickadees were fee-beeing in the woods, and I saw rabbit and snowshoe hare tracks, as well as the tracks of whatever tiny creatures the dogs try to dig out of the snow (as I yell, "DON'T KILL ANYTHING!" So far, so good.) Voles, perhaps?

Whenever I walk in our woodlot, I lose track of time and live entirely in the present. It is so peaceful! The dogs are blissful, tearing back and forth, sniffing the ground, just being dogs. I can't do it justice with my writing. If I'm in a crap mood, it evaporates by the time I reach the woods. I love it back there.