In Sunday’s sun we went stumping through the marshes, a walk through the fen with two dappled dogs that blended with the shadows and the grasses. The wetlands are amazingly dry this year. The lay of the land traps and seeps with runoff from springs and hillside streams, lazy slow low valley meanders, bog water. A myriad of grasses makes a winter palette, all the shades of green and gold and rusty red, punctuated by copses of stunted trees. Each shallow pond is encircled by yellow straw grasses and cattails gone downy to seed, tall sedge the color of rust, small stunted trees, and man-built aeries for eagles or hawks.

Thousands of Canada geese from one horizon to the foothills fanned their tails high above us, upside-down white V on their feathers spread to compliment the formations of their skeins in flight, big black wings beating the air and the cacophonous honking in rhythm. They spread their pinions and their webbed feet and circled gliding down to splash in the bright blue water.

I recall once years ago we walked the fen, grasses and rushes and bushes reaching above our heads to scratch the damp dark winter sky, and through the stark rustling leaves of grass we could see out across the dark lake the great sweeping wings of a bald eagle hunting for fish. We stood in silence, hoping the great bird would circle closer, and we held our breath when he pivoted, spinning on the wind with one wing to earth the other to the heavens. We could also see a flock of winter swans on the water, halfway on their southbound journey, and the air was thick with the sounds of ducks and geese. The eagle disappeared behind a tall stand of trees.

Sunday’s sunshine glistened blue and shining on the glassy ponds and twisting streams, on the wings of birds. We walked through the sandy bottoms and across muck and mud, hopping from one tuft of grass to the next across the deepest mires. Tracks of deer and raccoons, coyotes and countless small rodents, ducks and geese peppered the soft loam by the water’s edge. We watched a great blue heron lift with one, two, three strong beats of his wide wings, rising just above the marshes, and then he went gliding a long distance, graceful long neck tucked, long beak outstretched. He tilted his wings, a pause in flight that caught my breath, stalled, then settled gently back to earth on his long stilt legs. We saw three white egrets standing knee deep in the reflective bright water, so serene and patient, the lines of their bodies like calligraphy.

We returned home happy and tired from carefully picking our way through the mire, our heads full of the sounds of birds.