I had to have one more hike before returning home. Zero degrees, minus twenty-two wind chill, but sunny and beautiful. Ben and I bundle up with everything warm we have. Ben is wearing the warm, warm, warm blue coat that Rodney bought in Vienna in 1988. That was a fun trip to visit George and Ruth Yost.

Ben and I parked – a mile north of his house and hiked toward Sucker Lake. To get out of the wind we turned on a snowy path toward a small bridge that crosses the channel between Sucker Lake and Vadnais Lake. The reward I hoped for came swimming toward us from both directions. Fifty mallards swam toward us obviously expecting to be fed. Other humans had dropped food from that bridge. We only captured their pictures in our phones. From the other direction came four trumpeter swans (we had seen two swans on the channel as we drove to the park).

No regrets about the cold – my fingers even thawed after I thought they might fall off.