Aki makes a half-hearted attempt to slide her face along a thin patch of snow. We have to accept it little dog. It’s early spring on the moraine. The trail is still frozen but soon will soften into sticky mud. Without snow, sunshine, or summer growth to give the moraine sparkle, he is like a movie star at home with a cold. Not something you want to see until he smiles out a flash of beauty that helps your ignore his red and dripping nose, pallid skin, and disheveled comfort clothes.

Ice holds all the moraine’s beauty today—the turquoise-blue glacier and the crystal-clear ice formed around fallen blades of grass and river rocks. An insistent-green clump of grass forces it way through a shrinking ice lens. Skunk cabbages will blossom soon.