Gravity

I walk on the surface of mostly month old snow, the trail packed so well by deer and other snowshoe-ers that I don't need to wear my own. The low angle of the January noon sun has created a taller forest on the ground than the one I walk through. I move along, eclipsing shrubs, trying to determine the hue of the shadows before me--charcoal or ash, the color of evening or morning.

When I get to the open field, absent of trees, I could be walking on some other planet's icy moon. Snow has drifted over the path, and with every other step my foot falls through.

I think of a friend in Kansas, awaiting a snowstorm, who has written me about her six-month-old: "Edison is in his Johnny Jumper and I propped up a box full of his toys next to him so he could dig them out and drop them on the floor."

"Glad to see he has discovered gravity," I will write back soon. Sometimes the world seems all push and pull: trees and toddlers growing up, me balanced on this temporary surface, but returning to the ground with every footfall. We learn to throw, jump, walk, but lest we forget where we belong, the sun presses us back to the earth in shadow.