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I would chop the same holes that I had the day before now re-frozen, pull up the trap and replace the apple if the old piece was gone. The first three traps were fairly close to home, less than a quarter mile, but the last trap on the log was clear across the other side of the bay another quarter mile. This was tough stuff. It was cold sometimes below zero.
I often had to wade through fresh snow that was blown and piled up against the cat-tails and swamp reeds all turned brown in winter. But forgetting the cold, it was some amazing thing, the experience of the cracking dawn, the designs of snow where the wind swept the ice clean between elongated drifts, on the frozen lagoon that I had to traverse to get to that fourth trap. Snow might be swirled around clumps of tall cat-tail rushes four feet high, but hollowed out around the reeds in a perfectly smooth conical circle all the way down to the ice.
The wind made all manner of patterns with the snow in conjunction with various trees that ringed the swamp and vegetative structures. It was marvelous to see and sometimes climb into the snowy valleys under cliffs of snow for the feeling of the aspect. I seemed also to enjoy the battle with the elements especially in storm, fighting the wind and snow, feeling the fury of the forces, making it through. It was a white and ever changing wonderland and I and my dog were its only visitors and spectators.
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