Little Biker Boy ran up and down the path, yelling into the wind. He made snowballs and threw them into the canal, shrieking as they bounced off the ice. He got down on all fours and pretended he was a coyote. He climbed up embankments and then slid down them. Then he came back to hold my hand as we walked along, his winter coat hanging open.
“What’s the bridge for?” he asked. I explained that it was an aqueduct, built to carry the canal over a stream.
We could hear the stream, rushing loudly through the old stone arches below the frozen canal, so we climbed down a path into the woods to see it up close. While Little Biker Boy poked around in the water, I took photos and tried to analyze the animal tracks I could see. A human and a dog had come this way. And a rabbit.
“Com’ere! Fast!” Little Biker Boy screamed. I could tell from his tone that he’d made some kind of discovery. On the edge of the stream, ice crystals had formed, thin cracked ice that formed delicate shapes.
“Aren’t they pretty?” he asked. “I found them.”
The sun felt almost hot as we walked back to the car, our winter coats unbuttoned. “That was fun,” Little Biker Boy said as he climbed into the backseat. His restless energy had dissipated and he talked calmly as we drove back home.
