Meandering Paths

The sheep reached their feeders in the pasture yesterday.

While ice still covers the landscape, the areas where snow sits atop the ice are less slick. For the sheep, discarded hay provides traction down the icy slope that leads from the barn to the pasture. From there, they made a circuitous path to the feeders.

My footprints down the driveway to the road follow a meandering path. I zigged and zagged in my attempts to walk on the snow instead of ice.

When I reached the roadway, I noticed drivers did the same thing.

Two meandering ruts are carved on the icy roads. Sometime during the sleet, before the layer of ice, a driver must have picked his way through in the night. For the past few days, drivers have followed in his tire tracks down the center of the road.

The husband and I followed those tracks last night, when, for the first time in four days we left the farm, and realized, as we always do, that it's rougher living in the hinterlands. After a few miles of single track, ice-covered roads, we reached a state route where all of the snow and ice was cleared, and people were driving in straight paths.

(The photo is of our road on Friday afternoon.)