Just for a little bit of good cheer, especially in parts of the world that have not yet rounded the corner into spring, I bring you my neighborhood, right now.  A week ago hardly any flowers were blooming, including on the trees.  

Every few months, my husband and I try to arrange a short weekend away.  The destinations are kind of random: Winchester, Virginia.  Berkeley Springs, West Virginia.  Personally, I am happy to see anywhere.  Usually.  This month, we made reservations to stay in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, in a region where my husband often vacationed with his family growing up.  Despite being the off-season, it was quite crowded and overwhelming, with Shopping being a stronger vibe than Beach.  So, after a quick lunch, still carrying our cups of coffee from the weird coffeehouse which was really a stealth real estate sales office, we escaped to Cape Henlopen State Park a few miles up the coast.

I had chosen the Salt Marsh Spur Trail (a 0.6-mile-each-way, straight-ish trail that dead-ends in the middle of a salt marsh) for two reasons: 1) it was short, and 2) salt marsh!!!  Really, insert the word "marsh" into any place name and I will want to go there.

So we walked the Salt Marsh Spur Trail.  Most of the way, we were actually surrounded by trees (scrubby pines and holly), so were unable to see any marsh.  The "spur," you see, was a long mound of higher ground, tree-covered, that extended out into the marsh but was not itself marshy.  In fact, the ground underfoot was made primarily of soft white sand.  It was comfy to walk on, but there was not a lot of visibility.  Also, the day was dark and chilly in the extreme.  Still, the place was as quiet as it could possibly be (we saw only 3-4 other people the whole time), peaceful.  It was quiet as far as animal life went, as well-- although informational signs told us it was a birdwatching paradise during migration periods, we saw only a couple of really large squirrels and a single heron.

Probably the highlight of my walk was when I stepped off the trail to pee in the shelter of a holly bush.  There truly was no one around, so I did not worry too much about exposure.  However, for modesty's sake, I did look for a little bit of cover, and found that the holly was much like the large laurels I remembered as a kid growing up in Western Massachusetts: it grows in a kind of welcoming hollow cave shape (wait, could that be why it's called holly?  Not really.), and you can more or less go inside.  Peeing aside, it was nice to be inside a tree again.  They are similar also in having dark, glossy evergreen leaves, so you can go inside them even in the wintertime.