Skiing 10-11am.

Cloudy, cold and in the teens with a stiff occasional breeze and frozen and hard packed snow fast for skiing but difficult maneuvering ruts and snowmobile tracks.

The farm dogs across the fields are already barking just as I step out the door.

Fat Robins perched in shrubs along the pond. I fed the geese crackers. Two ducks flying over fields towards Lafayette Pond where I am heading to. Grey, blue and white landscape.


View of Bald and Perkins Mountains with some unidentified peaks to the north including a cone shaped hill in either Somers or Hamden MA. A new hunting blind built into small rise. I flushed barn swallows from shrubbery.

I followed dirt road down to pond which is well frozen over to allow even snowmobiles to cross. I stood over dam that was erected in the 1800's to harvest ice from Lafayette Pond. Woods Stream flows out of pond creating a small wetland between housing developments twisting through downed trees and swamp thickets.

I crossed the pond again and had to herringbone my way up a steep rise above the pond before getting into the field and past several huge brush piles stacked in the wood line.

Many deer tracks skirting open fields. Snots flowing and jacket stiff from cold as I grasp for handkerchief.