Here in the north, winter can be long and cold. But sometimes that means stories told after dinner, candlelight, long naps, and the change in matter from liquid to various solids, enabling small miracles. Gliding across water, writing messages in the lake. 
Yesterday, I wasn’t feeling too well. I told a couple of people, and when I got home at the end of the day, there were two glass jars of broth sitting on my step. I texted the donor my thanks, and he asked: “Was the moose still in your yard sleeping?” Apparently, one had wandered into the edge of downtown somehow, although I’ve never seen moose outside the wilds before. It was a blessing, said my friend. “It felt to me like he was guarding your home.”
This morning, I got up and went outside to study the tracks. Sure enough, it looked like a moose had been there, from the shape and size of the hoofprints to the sharp outline of the legs and the lolling shape of belly.
I remember a friend and I shushing out Grateful Dead on the surface of a tiny pond in northern Minnesota, right next to a beaver hut. I remember walking on a frozen snowless lake one night when the stars blazed overhead and under my feet. I remember sunset reflecting off a chunk of ice that had been left when a fisherman carved out his fishing hole. In Seattle now, and I’m lucky to get snowed on once a year (no luck so far this year), and it suits me, but I’m also lucky to have those memories. Thanks.