Some sorrow, some snowshoeing

Woke up on this cold winter's day and bravely went off to a little meditation group. When the leader of the meditation group talked about "some sorrow," she piqued my interest. Ah, I realized after a bit, she was saying, "Samsara," the Buddhist idea of the continuous cycle of birth and death of which suffering is an inevitable part unless, of course, one achieves nirvana (to describe it crudely here).

So after the meditation and Dharma talk, I was off for a much needed coffee, a cafe mocha actually, to shrink the painfully swollen passages of my sinuses. But I was relaxed and happy when I got to Mocha Joe's and even happier to come hope to my husband, dog, two cats, the Sunday edition of the New York Times and a fire roaring in the fireplace.

Although the day was dark and getting darker as more snow clouds gathered over the valley, I convinced Paul to go snowshoeing, if only for a bit. He agreed, a wee grumpily, as we got into our hats, mitten, coats, boots, snowshoes and so on. Lucky Nokie--he cheerily charged outside in his thick ready-made fur coat. A fresh snow was falling as we headed behind our house to the edge of the woods. We snowshoed across our neighbors' backyards, which all abut a huge expanse of woods, and cut across a field and took the little path through a clearing that leads to a lovely path above the river. The woods sloped up a hill to our left and the river sat down below to our right as we headed out. It is a particularly lovely path, any time of year, and I even convinced a bright five-year old of this when we reached it after bushwhacking through the overgrowth this past summer to get there. "You're right!" he said. "This is magical!"

We ran into our neighbors, a couple, also out for a snowshoe with their dog, an Irish setter, and stopped for a chat as the snow fell and the dogs played and we all wished each other Happy New Year before going our separate ways. We followed the snowy path down to the place where one must either ascend up the hilly/mountainous incline, or go down below, across a creek and wetlands.We decided to turn around as we had had just the right amount of snowshoeing for the day and Nokie was stopping now anyway, lying down and chewing at and eating the frozen snowballs that had formed between the pads of his feet. This was his first "snowshoe" and he certainly was enjoying it. He was adopted by us this summer after being found, starved and dehydrated, next to his owner's body (our neighbor) who had been dead for two weeks. She had been a recluse and ill for sometime and we know he had not been out for a walk in several years.

Nokie leapt up from his thorough paw-cleaning and charged along the snowy path toward our house. We came down through our upper yard to the welcoming sight of the chicken-shaped whirligig swinging its wing-arms around in continuous circles and the chuffing of smoke from our chimney. Nokie raced to the backdoor--waiting for us to let him in to where it was warm and his supper soon would be served. This is, I suppose, Nokie's nirvana.