“Scarecrow on a wooden cross, blackbird in the barn,” – John Mellencamp

The first sound I heard after I slipped outside the back door that morning was the croaking squawk of an old raven. He sounded upset about the cold and the snow. I couldn’t blame him. It wasn’t even mid-October and the ground was white with fresh snow, the temperature floating a few degrees below freezing.

I inspected some deer tracks that crisscrossed the yard heading back and forth from the woods to the apple trees. There the pink blush on the inchworm-green fruit lay under a thick cover of snow. I had decided to get up early on this chilly Sunday morning to see the sun, which would soon be pulling itself up into the sky. I planned to head for the lake to hopefully get some pictures of the sunlight bathing the snow

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