The Snowy Day, by Ezra Walk Feets

We had tremendous snow. Historic snow! A back-to-back-to-back #snowmageddon scenario. School was cancelled, life was disrupted, the power went out and everything was white. Finally, I put on my big honking duck boots and noisy nylon pants and went for a proper walk. (By the way, does any one read these summaries? Just curious.) It was all so novel and disorienting: the bristly sizzle the snow made as I sunk in near to my knees; the altered, iced-over geographies of the trail; the disappeared blackberry vines, weighed down and buried somewhere in the drift. The world was familiar, but different: a semi-barren, bleached-out cousin-planet to my ordinary home. I was thinking about the Mars rover, which had shut down that week after all those years zapping back dispatches from its ramble across a similarly alien landscape; its final missive home: “My battery is low and it is getting very dark.” Well, unfortunately, my recording rig doesn’t carry itself with the same dignity. Friends, it zonked out on me unannounced, a thousand steps from home. And so, this episode ends without ending—we will set out together, but never return. And you will not be hearing my own signature sign off either, though I mean it just as earnestly as I type it out now: Thanks for coming on the walk. That was nice.

This week’s walk is sponsored by Erik Bloom’s Birthday, brought to you by his friend Chris Colin.