Of Snow and Pressure

I never imagined my spirit döppelganger would be a little white dog with tan markings, who lifts her leg to pee like a boy dog but is easily as freaked out by loud, high-pitched noise as am I.

Cool picture, though, no?

We followed snow machine trails, which meant we heard snow machines a lot, since this was on a weekend.
Trust of brazenly striking forth into snow, sometimes happening upon a house or cabin unexpected breach of private civilization, sometimes hurtled at by a territorial (but thankfully harmless) dog.

Trust of Roxy for me, so scared by the snow machine noise that no matter where the sound was coming from, she regarded "safe" as behind my back, in my footsteps. 

Trusting of deep and late-winter snow after a week of sunshine, going off trail.

This beautiful hole in the snow was on an old snow machine trail, where the snow was deeper and slushier. 

A look around showed we were about five or six feet off the ground!
No surprise, then, that the next step I took after that photo, I punched through thigh deep (yes, that is my crotch).

And there's my mini-me trying to help--or maybe just get in as close as possible--as I endeavor to pull myself out of the canted hole (and take a picture of it all).

Oh yeah, and when you punch through, you come out with a bootful of snow.

This was an old snow machine trail, as I was saying. In other words, a machine ten times my weight went by here and didn't fall through. And I did. Don't worry, that didn't lead to even a moment of self-flagellating "I'm heavier than a snow machine." I know better than that, at least! It's all about pressure. It's all about spreading the weight. When we came back another time, I brought the snowshoes.

What am I saying here?
I drug my foot (the other one stuck in the hole) for so long writing and publishing this post, mostly held up by the photo uploading phase. Since what I really want to do is write, and since I wrote in my head at least two posts that never got written up here, getting blocked by the visuals seems ludicrous and typical self-sabotaging logic. It's also about the pressure--focused pressure that makes me sink rather than spread pressure that would float even if ten times my size. Guilty as charged, and awareness will help me do better in future. 

Lately I've been feeling not like a mirror but a portrait, being constructed and created by a plurality of people, places, animals, ideas. It's as if my own emotions are in suspended animation, reacting in a gesture that palely mimics the emotion of a real person. As if I'm Pygmalion's Galatea, except Pygmalion is multiple and I am muzzily self-aware.

I am cast loose on the sinking snows or watery eddies of relationship, as a marriage turns to friendship, as a friendship turns to a work relationship, as acquaintanceship possibly turns to landlord-tenant, as my relationship to this town and the land and water surrounding it take on a growing tint of future past. 

And I'm forgetting basic things. I left a tap running one day, the stove on another; sometimes I completely lose a recent event that I know all about. Perhaps I'm going to start forgetting names and to eat or sleep. Or perhaps it's "just" stress.

I'm not in the crucible this time, nor am I the phoenix, as has been the case in the past. This is all about water. 
All I can do is trust. Maybe, like Roxy, look for something to hide behind. The only somethings I can think of  are my journal and my notebook.