Winter Journal: Melt

Fresh fallen snow holds perfect memories of every creature’s passage. Each print tells a story – when they passed, where they were going, whether they walked or ran, hunted or fled. The snow keeps these records with a precision no human mind can match.

Our wild neighbors reveal themselves in the days following the first real snow. Their footprints map hidden lives onto white pages, showing not just who they are, but how they move through their world. A porcupine, new to the neighborhood, has left wide, waddling tracks between den and feeding trees. Coyote prints weave through the valley in tight formation – not just passing through, but hunting as a pack.

The regulars have left their marks too. Squirrel tracks zigzag between buried acorns, their tiny feet punching deep holes as they leap and dig. By the creek, raccoon prints show their distinctive hand-like shape, each finger clear as a child’s drawing. Fox tracks tell tales of winter hunting – a straight-line stalk, then a sudden pounce where sensitive ears detected a mouse moving beneath snow and frozen grass. Deer paths circle the valley like ancient roads, connecting warm sunny slopes where winter-brown grass still offers meager meals.

As days pass, the snow’s memory begins to blur. Edges soften, details melt away. A deer track stretches, distorts, becomes something larger and stranger. The dainty prints of a red fox expand until they might belong to a neighbor’s wandering dog. The snow forgets, slowly at first, then all at once – leaving only bare earth and questions.

Memory works like snow. Sharp and clear at first, capturing life’s passage in perfect detail. But time and warmth work their inevitable changes. Details soften. Gaps appear. The mind, uneasy with a void, fills these spaces with fictions. Stories grow larger, stranger. A deer becomes a moose. A fox becomes a wolf. Memory, like snow, is an unreliable narrator.

Yet our fallible, changeable memories form the foundation of what we perceive to be self. Without memory, there can be no stories. No childhood. No adventure with friends. No mentors. No books read or conversations had. No loves or loses. No likes or dislikes. No name.

Our memories are as fragile as a collection of tracks in snow – some sharp and clear, others softened by wind, and some completely melted away. What remains is neither pure truth nor pure fiction, but something between – like half-melted tracks in aging snow, suggesting shapes just beyond recognition.  

Or, is it really just snow becoming water once again?