Snow Covered Trees

The snow is light and fluffy, but about knee deep, the tracks come easily, yet up hill is a work out like none other. The trees are still covered in snow in here, the wind not yet reaching into the forest to force the snow down, making you feel like it is snowing all over again. I can see closed buds, still reaching towards the sun, preparing for Spring already.
Deer tracks come in to the trail and I follow them, thinking of Mom's story of seeing one bound across the trail, the only one of her three co-skiers to see him run across their path, "Our eyes were down."
The last time we were out here we called it Deer Highway, seeing countless tracks and places where they had laid down, spent a night, weary from the winter, dreaming of Spring.
We reach the end of our trail, for the second time, a rock Mom and Dad used to walk to, marking Ye Olde Canterbury Road. They used to travel this on horse back, I think each time.
"It's so beautiful out here."
"Mmhmm."
"Daddy would have loved this, it's so weird that he's not here."
"I was thinking about the last time we were all out here and we skied up to the clearing and were talking about a wedding, about what kind of flowers I might have."
"Really?"
"And now he's just gone." Now that I'm actually planning a wedding, I think.
We push off with our poles and fly back over our now well tracked trail, all down hill from here.
A winter wonderland.