Temperatures in our part of the world have dropped to forty degrees below zero. Creatures and people alike have been hiding away behind closed doors, struggling to stay warm beneath layers of quilts with steaming mugs of hot something in hand.
Today the weather broke. That is to say, today temperatures shot up to minus fifteen degrees. Balmy and walk-worthy weather, for sure. I donned my walking things and struck out into the fields ("struck" being a rather aggressive way of saying "slogged," "pushed," "pressed"), snow sitting mid-calf and untouched by anything save the winds of the past few days.
The slog was formidable and a half-hour's hike had me deep breathing and chilled as I marched my way across territory that no human had graced for several days. Because people could not have withstood the freezing winds and biting blasts of ice and snow.
But the rabbits did. Everywhere I went I saw tracks of one critter kind: bunnies. We know the little guys to be fast ~~ our dogs give them chase daily. And are daily outsmarted by the speedy balls of fur. But I did not know that they were so hearty. Their tracks ran the distance of many city blocks and shot off in all directions. Evidence of a thriving population was everywhere in that windblasted field.
I trudged home, exhausted after plowing snow for only a few minutes, thinking about how unlike those cotton-tails I am ~~ how much I should aspire to mimic them.
Sometimes the chill that blasts through my mind and emotions is daunting, unrelenting. When that happens, I want to retreat to warm safety and shield myself from the offending cause of the deep freeze. Since that's usually not an option, I might adopt a more rabbit-like approach and just keep moving from one place to the next ~~ it will keep me as warm, if not warmer, than sitting huddled out of sight ever could.
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