I awaken to a sunny sky, and am soon walking through the park again. Mont-Royal is noticeably untidy after recent messy weather, snowbanks sunk and crumpled with the weight of rain, trails littered with fallen branches and the last of the leaves. I take the long way to the lake, walking slowly, collecting little thoughts and phrases that I find curled between the shadows of trees, or poking out of snowbanks. I press these between the pages of a notebook, soon to be threaded through my ballpoint pen, sewn slowly into poems.

Near the lake, sunlight glints on a thin veneer of ice that clings to several rocks, needling my eye. I crouch with my camera, photographing closely (see quicksilver, above).

I always notice the lowness of the snow immediately ringing trees, and wonder if this is because roots soak up its moisture, or because trees cause a kind of shadow around themselves when wind distributes snow, or because they produce enough heat to melt it.

I think of Margaret Bowater park in Corner Brook, and how it is the inverse of this one. They have opposite heights and hearts, Margaret Bowater concavely surrounding (for the most part) a small pond, while Mont-Royal is convex, and spirals around the side of a hill.

I write most of this at a table in the grand chalet, water and salt melting off my boots, pooling under the table. The last of my hot chocolate goes cold while I read Thoreau. This is my epigraph lately:

Many a forenoon have I stolen away, preferring to spend thus the most valued part of the day; for I was rich, if not in money, in sunny hours and summer days, and I spent them lavishly....
· Henry David Thoreau, Walden