Winter's Bone

8

REE FOLLOWED a path made by prey uphill through scrub, across a bald knob and downhill into a section of pine trees and pine scent and that pious shade and silence pines create. Pine trees with low limbs spread over fresh snow made a stronger vault for the spirit than pews and pulpits ever could. She lingered. She sat on a big thinking rock amid the pines and clamped her headphones on. She tried to match the imported sounds to the setting and selected Alpine Dusk. But those wintry mountain sounds matched the view too perfectly and she switched to The Sounds of Tropical Dawn. Snow worked loose on branches overhead and sifted between pine needles to drift down as powder while she heard warm waves unrolling and birds of many colors and maybe monkeys. She could hear the smell of orchids and papayas, sense a rainbow of fish gathering in the shallows near the beach.

She sat there until the big thinking rock made her butt too cold.