January 3, 2026

Good morning!

It’s Saturday. We took Thoreau’s advice from yesterday and continued our long walk through deep snows in the fields and woods to keep our spirits up. All the trees were cozy beneath their winter woolens. Even the beard lichens on the old birches were wearing their puffy white hats.

Those particular lichens belong to the Usnea family, which has more than 1,000 species. Proper identification would require that I remove the lichen off the tree and inspect its private parts, which seems far too intrusive when we aren’t even on a first-name basis.

But any Usnea is a good and welcome friend. Its presence assures us the air is clean and the forest ecosystem is healthy—and that’s all the introduction we need.

“It seems to me that the natural world is the greatest source of excitement; the greatest source of visual beauty; the greatest source of intellectual interest. It is the greatest source of so much in life that makes life worth living.”

—Sir David Attenborough

Onwards,

Clara