When I was a 13-year-old living in a south St. Louis suburban neighborhood, I woke one winter morning to a world encased in ice. Sidewalks, driveways, streets, every blade of grass—all coated in about a half-inch of water in its solid phase. 

The scene outside our living room picture window was both delightful and daunting.

Large trees slumped. Some imploded with a loud CRACK! under the weight of all that ice.A friend from school had spent the night, and together we hatched what seemed, in the moment, to be a brilliant plan: cross-country ice skating!  I had been taking lessons that winter so my skates were close at hand, and we also found an older pair in the closet that fit my friend’s feet (she was shorter than me, with smaller feet). Score!

We thundered down the stairs from my upstairs bedroom, swaddled in parkas, scarves, hats, and gloves, through the small house to the backdoor. My mom was busy in the kitchen, so she didn’t see the skates tucked under our arms and raise an alarm… she just yelled, “Be careful!” and something else I didn’t hear because Cindy and I were laughing in anticipation of our great adventure.

Our great miscalculation, actually.

Recent research suggests that it takes much longer for the brain to mature than was once assumed. A full understanding of the concept of cause and effect, and the ability to run virtual simulations in one’s head to anticipate consequences, doesn’t happen until about 25 years of age.

I guess that’s as good an explanation as I’m going to find for why two reasonably intelligent teens didn’t realize that there’s only one answer to the equation:

hills + ice + skates = X? 

We spent the rest of the afternoon inside mulling over the results of our experiment safely ensconced near the fireplace, repeatedly and gingerly shifting our bruised behinds on their piles of pillows as we watched the 1972 Winter Olympics figure skating competition.

That wasn’t the last time in my life I made a bad decision that resulted in a hard fall to Earth, even after my 25th birthday had passed.  Today, though, I’m remembering that lesson from all those years ago as I slip on hiking boots, and wrap the soles with YakTraks for good measure.

[Thanks to the following photographers for making their work available through the Creative Commons license: Evelyn Berg, Dave Herholz, Irene Mei, Sheila Sund, Andy McLemore, Evelyn Berg,  Dave Herholz,  and Hiker- Hu**. © 2017 Sidewalk Zendo. Reprints welcomed with written permission from the author.]

Wildlife tracks are one of the best things about taking a hike after a nighttime snowfall, to my way of thinking.

So many mammals and birds are active in the early morning, late evening, or after-dark hours, but in winter it’s easier to see and identify who has been coming and going while I’ve been tucked in warm and cozy under a quilt.

Sometimes the prints serve as a kind of calling card. For example, deer make an easy to recognize track…and rabbits, with their radically different front and back feet, leave an unmistakable mark…as do raccoons, with their nearly opposable thumbs and longer, flatter hind paws.

Even featherweight songbirds leave a telltale impression.Sometimes, the marks left in snow tell a story, like this image left by a barred owl dropping down from above to grab a meal for take-out…or at least a vignette, as with this short story of a deer mouse bursting through a crust of snow for a quick trip to some dried vegetation… looking for a seed snack, maybe, while also trying to avoid becoming an owl snack?

There’s no clear protagonist or villain in these snowy saga… just tales (and tails) of life and death on Planet Earth, but I love to read their stories.

[Thanks to the following photographers for making their work available through the Creative Commons license: USFWS, Wesley Fryer, Lassi Kurkijärvi, CA-DFW, Carol Jacobs-Carre, Kent McFarland, heidi bakk-hansen, and plantsforpermaculture. © 2017 Sidewalk Zendo. Reprints welcomed with written permission from the author.]

It’s an well-known joke in New Mexico that you can’t order anything at a restaurant without being asked, “Red or green.” The customer’s response tips off the waitstaff whether the individual is a local or new in town. Tourists will ask, “red or green… what?”

Chile, of course.

That’s chile with an “e,” not an “i.” Chili ingredients may include chiles, but chiles are not, on their own, chili.

Naturally, not every restaurant in the state has chiles in the kitchen and on the menu, so the humor comes with some hyperbole, but hot peppers are definitely a signature dietary staple here. The appropriate response to the red-or-green question is not “What?,” but “Which is hotter today?”New Mexico is known for growing a highly prized long green (aka Anaheim”) chile… so much so that chiles are as much a symbol of the state as roadrunners and biscochitos. But chiles aren’t responsible for all the reds and greens to be seen.

So in honor of the days between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, I’ve spent the week’s daily walks on the lookout for iconic colors of the season that don’t grow on a pepper plant.Have a safe and happy New Year’s Eve, and a Peaceful 2018.

[Thanks to the following photographers for making their work available through the Creative Commons license: Sharon Sperry Bloom, MJs Kitchen, Artotem, Rockin’Rita, Carla Lane, josephmccowie, Tadson Bussey, Tracy Rhodes, and Laura Taylor. © 2017 Sidewalk Zendo. Reprints welcomed with written permission from the author.]

With a slew of major holidays on the horizon—Christmas, Diwali, Festivus, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Ramadan, and the Winter Solstice—I decided the focus of this week’s walks would be conifers. There are some lovely and impressively large spruces in the residential neighborhoods not far from Santa Fe plaza, but I want to zoom in on the macro scale…get up close and personal…nose-to-nose with a pine cone…

I spy a green spine…

These evergreen trees are so exquisitely fresh and verdant during the time of year when much of life has gone to ground, sheltered beneath an insulating quilt of fallen leaves, or folded inward to guard against Jack Frost’s pranks.

Is it any wonder many people want to bring that fragrant greenery inside, and then bedeck the boughs with all manner of shiny objects that make the season bright, reflecting and magnifying the limited candescence of these shortest days of the year (in the Northern Hemisphere, at least)?

[Thanks to the following photographers for making their work available through the Creative Commons license: Jeff Kubina, messycupcakes, Quinn Dombrowski, Alex Lehner, ~lzee~by~the~Sea~, Enora Josse, and Holly Levey. © 2017 Sidewalk Zendo. Reprints welcomed with written permission from the author.]