White.

It seemed as everything was white.

Except Apacha and I. His camouflaged coat of brown and gray and auburn matched the trunks and branches of the treeline. My red winter coat was abrasive and stuck out amongst the white. We headed out to our bench yesterday afternoon - at about two o'clock - and the hills were practically ours. There was about an inch of snow beneath my boots and his paws and more falling, quite quickly from the white sky. Everything seemed like a lightbulb - bright and luminous. The snow on the ground ascended and descended the hills of Frick and was eventually swallowed by the sky.

As we headed towards the bench, I observed the ground. It was virgin and untouched. Sure - many people had stepped there before, but on this day, at this hour - the footprints and paw prints we impacted into the ground - were the only footprints and paw prints on this layer of snow. We were stepping on something that had never been stepped on before.

I thought of this as we walked. I looked back to the hill we just walked down, and saw intersections of footprints weaving in and out of each other. All morning, people had been making their mark. It felt liberating knowing that I had marked something - if only for an hour - before the fresh falling snow of the hour - recovered my tracks.

Apacha is meant to be in the snow. The first thing he did when he got outside this morning was dig his nose into the snow, and then he crashed his body down onto it and rolled it throughout his coat. He is part Husky, part German Shepard, and looks like he belongs outside. I often feel bad that I keep him in a house warmed with heat all day, when just outside is the clamorous cold he yearns for. I think back to where he and I were this time last winter - in Palenque, Mexico, in the Mexican state of Chiapas. There it was humid and the sun seemed to lay lower and linger longer, causing Apacha to constantly pant and search out shady spots and cool pockets of dirt. I think about how selfish it is to keep him inside because I don't particularly like the winter.

But once we are outside, and I see his body move through the snow - his torso extend and lengthen, I appreciate the cold. I appreciate how it slaps you in the face and wakes you up in bites. I appreciate how nature mimics itself time and time again. As I observed the trees in Frick, the baron branches reminded me of a frozen stream with cracks in it. The branches looked like a frozen body of water after you throw a rock on it to test its thickness.

And there are so many cracks of branches to our right as we head to the bench. They repeat themselves over and over until the eye breathes them into one mass of forest.

Once we get to the bench, it is covered with an inch of snow, so we don't sit. I hunch in front of it with Apacha at my side and we look out to the horizon. The white is intercepted by the highway, where I observe how many white vehicles are moving back and forth. Why are most trucks white? These trucks pull trailers full of materials for us humans. I see a Walmart truck, a Coors Light truck and a Jim Beam truck and think of all the things we don't not need, but consume anyway. I think of all the shit moving around on highways, and then into stock rooms, and then onto selves and then into our homes. I think of all the things we fill ourselves with, and all the things we should, but sometimes don't - like an imprint on the fresh snow, or watching a dog fly through the park.

And then I think of the simplicity of it all. I think how nice it is to have a class that encourages me to get outside and write. And that I did - with a small purple notebook and a bright pink pen, I hunched my body weight to my legs and crouched in front of my bench with a blue heart and watched the cars move back and forth with my dog at my side. It felt good to sit still and lose the feeling in my legs because of the cold.