Walking the dogs at two below zero

And now, the second week of January, it is quiet. All the hoopla of Christmas is over--the shopping, the decorating, the baking, the chattering, the singing. The lights and spangles have been dismantled and returned to the basement closet, the living room is severely decluttered--just a few candles on the mantelpiece--and it is solidly winter. There is nothing in particular to look forward to--no presents or celebrations or get-togethers. Just cold and dark for months to come.

If that sounds gloomy, and it probably does, it is not meant to be. There is a lot of beauty in January, and February, though I reserve judgment on March.

For now, I appreciate the quiet weekends, when we build a slow-burning fire about 2 p.m. and keep it going into the night. We spend the afternoon absorbed in reading, rousing now and then to poke a log and send up a shower of sparks (which sends the border collie into the other room, in alarm) or brew another pot of tea. There aren't many place to go on a Sunday afternoon when it is two below zero. Or, more accurately, there aren't many places to go that are worth the trouble--pulling on all those layers of longjohns and wool and corduroy and fleece, shivering in a car that takes as long to warm up as it does to get to its destination, squeaking down the snowpacked street on square tires.

I did a little snowshoeing in the park last week when the snow was still fresh and deep; since that 16-inch storm, though, we got a full day of rain, oddly enough, and now the remaining foot of snow is packed down and crusty and not much good for snowshoeing or skiing.

About the only thing that gets us out of the house on these January weekends is, of course, the obligation of the dogs: they need their walks, twice a day, no matter the weather.

Yesterday when it was two below zero, but sunny and bright and no wind, we put Boscoe's red booties on his back legs (the road salt stings his aging, cracked paws and makes him sit down in the middle of the street and refuse to move), pulled on our Mad Bomber hats, and headed down to the lake.

There was a trickle of people, heads bent, hands jammed deep in pockets--several hardy runners in neoprene face masks, and a few other dog walkers. We hadn't gone too far before I saw a white gleam in the top of a bare tree. At first I thought it was a snowy owl, but as we got a little closer it was clear that it was a hawk. He was fluffed up against the cold, sitting on a high branch, turning his head occasionally to scan the snow for mice, or voles.

While I gawked, dog walkers and runners stopped to see what I was looking at. A woman in a green polarfleece hat said that she'd seen the bird a few days ago, too, and that the guy who runs the pavilion told her it was a peregrine falcon. (It was a red-tailed hawk.) He had also told her where the bald eagles nest and other dubious secrets of the park.

A man stopped as we were chatting and offered us the use of his binoculars. He told us where he had seen a pileated woodpecker, and I offered up the great gray owl that lives by the Japanese Garden. Another woman came by, walking a golden retriever with a plumey white tail. "What are you looking at? What's up there?" she asked, and stopped, and joined our little group.

As I trotted home some time later, my face numb with cold, I turned back to look at the hawk and thought what a wonderful thing it was--huge and beautiful, adorning our park, bringing people together in laughter and conversation outside, even when it is two below.