It’s been snowing. In the north of the Netherlands. Not far from the coast. Instead of melting like usual, the snow has been sticking around. Snowmen appear in random fields. Sleighs come out of sheds, and mothers pull their bundled up toddlers along the sidewalks or supervise their children as they sled down mini snow slopes.

Snow crunches beneath my feet as I trod down a bike path near the secondary school in our neighborhood. My eyes are doing double duty: scanning for black ice in my path while making sure my beagle dog doesn’t eat anything gross. When it comes to a beagle–a type of hound that walks with its nose to the ground, constantly sniffing for something to gobble up–school grounds are hotbeds of gross: discarded bits of ham and cheese sandwiches thrown into the bushes, mayonnaise-smeared paper containers that once held fries, old yogurt containers of white goo mottled with green camouflaging shards of plastic. My beagle finds all these things to be delicacies. But today, these delectable treats are covered in snow.

She makes up for the dearth of delicacies by grabbing a plastic Sprite bottle and throwing it for herself. I lead her into a field on the campus that’s covered in a thick layer of snow. We turn the bottle into a game. I throw it for her, she chases. We play tug-of-war with the bottle, the label shredding off as we go. I run across the field–crunch, crunch, crunch!–and think of my friend Cami who’s been skiing in the farm fields the last few days, having the time of her life. The bottle breaks, instantly transformed into a danger to my dog. I throw the bottle and its shredded label into a trash can and continue our walk.

Further down the bike path, I spot a neon yellow squiggle in the snow. I contemplate its curves, its pointillism, its circular puddles. Was it a man or a male dog who left this rather artistic mark? A funny thought occurs to me: A man (or very clever dog) recalling a Robert Frost poem: Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.
Frost’s poem starts out like this:
Whose woods these are I think I know.   
His house is in the village though; 
He will not see me stopping here   
To watch his woods fill up with snow. 

But in my warped imagination, this man-dog comes up with his own version of the poem as he “paints” the snow in neon yellow:
Whose path this is I think I know.
The school’s–it’s closed on Sundays, though;
They will not see me stopping here
To pee a squiggle in the snow.

My brain is flooded with ideas, some silly, some smart, as I walk back home. New concepts for books, stories, blog posts. Too bad I’m on deadline for work.

I pound off my boots before opening the front door. Heat swamps me, and I quickly shed my hat, gloves, scarf, and winter jacket. Trade the boots for slippers.
I sit down to work. But first, I decide to write about someone who did not stop by the woods on a snowy evening.