Paksworld

It’s fortuitous that in Book III, I’m  presently dealing with winter weather (shows how little progress I’ve made lately!) because today it snowed.  It hasn’t snowed like this here for years, and I decided that a long walk in the snow would give me more recent sensory inputs than my memory of the most recent previous snow.   

I was right–I had forgotten a number of details of sound, the feel of snow under boots, the feel of snow on tall bunchgrass (tricky–you can’t see where the bunchgrass “humps” are for sure), the feel of snow with meltwater underneath.   I walked for almost two hours,  with undersurfaces of rock, mud, short grass, tallgrass, mud, etc.  I looked at tracks (including one I correctly IDed, according to the field guide when I got back, as gray fox.)  I watched birds (birds not happy with me for disturbing them.  Sniffed for interesting smells.   Picked up snow and felt its texture.

The snow was blowing on a stiff breeze–sometimes big puffy flake-clumps, sometimes little ones, more and less from time to time.   I faced it; I faced away from it.  I paused in the windbreak of some trees…how far could I see downwind?  How many snowflakes eddied in to this cover?   Would I notice something the size of a coyote or dog over there?  (No.)   Horse?  (Yes.)

I walked through junipers bent down with big lumps of snow–how much got on me?   I walked down to the creek and noticed how it looked…how big the ripples were made by individual snowflakes and by lumps of snow blown off tree limbs.

Now I could claim all this was research, and it was…but it was also a lot of fun and absolutely beautiful.  Not as silent as I’d like (highways too near and the snow not enough to stop traffic) but still the sound was much less than usual.    One of the things I’d forgotten was how much more effort it takes to walk in snow (maybe especially a wet snow melting underneath)…that body-feel will be available in the next scene or so.

Unlike my characters, I could come back to hot chocolate with cinnamon.  They’re stuck out in the cold snow.