NOTES TO BEGIN WITH noon on new year's day just come in from a trudge the world is white it slopes it bristles with trees the sky is shut by drifts of clouds the light comes from everywhere everything is light with no heat the black bark is made of light the ground is a light someone has tracked over more than one someone as soon as the snowfall slows the small tracks appear then more falls the first tracks are covered with a smooth blank sheet of snow that new tracks cross lying over or beside the old as they push up the slope through saplings and greenbriers then turn and come back again the one stepping having been watched from squirrel nests and high branches the whole time