walking path · v · only in cold
The winter path exists only when the ground freezes. From late November to March, in years that grant a hard frost, a track becomes walkable through the low meadow that is, the rest of the year, marsh. Beneath the path the bog is six feet deep in places. The frost makes it solid; the cold makes it possible; the season makes it brief. The path is signed by no marker — its existence is the season.
Walkers see, from this path: the reed-beds white-edged, the alders bare and black, the building's lower windows from an angle they never offer in summer, and, on still mornings, their own breath ahead of them like a second walker. The cold, by long agreement, is not to be complained of. The path is walked by those who keep the frost as a kind of appointment and by no one else.
It connects, at its near end, to the larder door; at its far end, to the circular walk by way of the wood. In a thaw it ceases to exist. In a thaw it leaves, instead, a path of memory which one can still walk, in cold, if one knows. The dawn walkers prefer it in February.