Friday, January 25th 2013

I left the house this morning with the intention to go to class, answer a few emails, and mail a letter home. In the middle of class, I lost focus on what my professor was saying. Outside the old, heavy windows of the hot, dry classroom snow was falling. Lightly at first. Enough to leave a thin layer on the sidewalks and the bushes in front of the window. At 10:20, when I was free from sitting in the classroom the rest of the afternoon, I grabbed my bag and headed out into the snow.

My first thought was, "I'll go home and bundle up and drink a cup of coffee." Instead I walked down Maryland, past my house and on my way to Baum Grove. I was giddy to see what it looked like with the fresh snow. The walk to Baum was filled with bumper to bumper traffic on fifth and slush that collects on the corner of the streets. It was messy, and noisy, and the snow flew into my face and stuck on the lenses of my glasses. I was thankful when I couldn’t hear the horns honking or tires rolling over the sloppy slush and I saw the army of trees surrounding the park.

Baum Grove was blanketed in white and as I got closer I realized it was untouched. My tracks on the path leading to the small garden would be the first. Underneath my boots the clean snow sounded that familiar crunch that makes me miss home terribly. Those infamous Minnesota negative temperature nights where it would lightly snow. I’d shuck on my boots, winter coat, and a pink, purple hat that resembled a dragon’s tail and venture out into the silence of the falling snow. For a while I'd walk along the clean slate of snow making smily faces or peace signs and that crunch would sound. 

When I reached the benches around the garden, I brush off the thin layer of snow with my mitten and sat down huddling my elbows into my sides and looked up. A mix of grey and white in several shades mirrored that of the ground below. Every branch of the trees housed piles of snow and only the tips of the still green grass poked above the layer of snow. Baum looked sprinkled with powdered sugar and perhaps if I stayed too long I’d develop a sweet tooth for the delicious way the snow makes everything look magical.

On the other side of the park, near a small crab tree were a flock of birds hopping around in the snow. Every few seconds the birds would lower their heads to the ground and peck at the grass. Through the curtain of snow I noticed the burnt orange breasts and almost blue hue of the top feathers. Robins. Another type of bird joined them as well. It had a long, slender beak with white spotted bellies and leaner bodies than the Robins. I couldn’t identify the birds, but their colors stood out in the white snow beneath their feet.

One robin in particular kept flying from the snow to a branch in the tree and back again. Every time a bird would invade the robin’s space he would fly out of the tree and chase off the intruder and then fly back into the tree. He did this seven times before the flock flew away.

I sat for a while longer on the bench staring at the spot the robin had been guarding. It was odd enough to see robin’s in January, but to see one protecting a place or object that wasn’t his nest was peculiar. After several frozen minutes I decided I was beginning to resemble a snow man and gathered my bag. Before I left the parklet behind, I snuck up to the crab tree and tried to find out what robin was keeping safe. In the minutes I had been sitting on the bench, collecting snow, the footprints of the birds were gone and a new sheet of snow covered that little treasure the robin was protecting.