Writing Resources from Fifteen Minutes of Fiction

When You Were Just Five Days Old

When you were just five days old, I took a friend on a journey into the White Mountains of New Hampshire. "It'll be amazing," I told him. "We'll snowshoe up Sugarloaf Mountain, a mountain ten miles west of one of the most majestic mountain ranges in the eastern United States. It will blow your mind."

And I wasn't wrong. Oh, it was magnificent. Fresh, unbroken snow, save for the tracks of moose, deer, and fox. Tree branches bent low with walls of pure, heavy snow. A blue sky, and the most stunning view of the Presidential Mountain range capped in white.

We were, to put it simply, speechless.

That was when you were five days old. Just two weeks later, when you were twenty days old, I took another friend to the same mountain. "You won't believe it," I assured her. "It'll knock your socks off."

And I don't think I was wrong, but what havoc two weeks had wreaked! The snow was pock-marked from rain showers, making the ground look like an acnified teenager. Wind and rain had knocked twigs and pine cones from the trees, soiling the pure white snow with black and brown debris. The sun had entirely melted the fields of snow on the summit, leaving wet and bare rock. And worst of all, the magnificent mountain peaks were hidden in the clouds.

Now you are almost gone, and I feel as though the entire world has been rolling about in the muck and the mire and the mud for the last month.

Oh, March, you are a pig.

More writing by this author

Blogs on This Site