Welcome to “Dear Daybreak”, a weekly Daybreak column. It features short vignettes about life in the Upper Valley: an encounter, some wry exchange with a stranger or acquaintance… Anything that happened in this region or relates to it and strikes a contributor as interesting or funny or poignant—or that makes us appreciate living here.

Want to submit a Dear Daybreak item? Just go here!

Dear Daybreak:

Although it was ostensibly spring a few weeks back, the recent ice storm reported otherwise. I kept venturing outside to see the familiar trees and shrubs looking magical under a coat of ice.  I didn’t worry about them surviving this onslaught. They are New Hampshire plants who have seen it all before. Something I hadn't seen before is the way the ice formed grooves and canals to match those on the buds and leaves.

I recently visited the cherry blossoms in DC and saw a similarity in the photos I took of the blossomed cherry trees and the iced crabapple trees. Just like those much beloved cherry blossoms, the ice spectacle didn’t last long. After a few days, the ice was shed like hailstones. Unlike the reliable, annual cherry blossoms, ice storms are rare. The lesson here is to seize the moment before it melts away.

— Terri Munson, originally published on the Grantham Garden Club blog (with plenty more photos).

Dear Daybreak:

At the Diner

The old tired animal in me finds weekly respite in this calm warm nest perched on a stool

eyes closed fresh coffee voices adrift like an orchestra tuning the waitress explaining her tattoo between refills a long graceful curving vine of leaves and constellations for each of the loving people in her life spiraling around and up her smooth young limb and for a moment I see myself on that vine or any one of a thousand others aging my way clear up to the thinnest of branches before letting go

— Danny Dover, Bethel

Dear Daybreak:

At some point over the winter, a fox died on the road on the Norwich side of the river, near a drain between the Lewiston parking lots, by the Dartmouth archaeological station. It is still there. Every day, I walk to work across the bridge, from Vermont to New Hampshire, and back again at the end of the day. The first time I noticed the fox, it blended in neatly with the piles of dirty snow along the side of the road and it wasn’t until I nearly stepped on it that I realized it was a body that had been alive until relatively recently. And so it has persisted for the last few months, subjected to freeze-thaw cycles and overlooked by anyone who might think to remove its remains. You wouldn’t even notice it unless you happened to be walking right there and happened to look down.

For me (and others?), its lasting presence serves as a twice-daily reminder of impermanence, seeing the slow disintegration of tissue, less fur and more bone visible now. The little jaw is not so different from mine, the little rib cage. How often do most of us in this country observe dead bodies over time, unpreserved? Not often. The only difference between the fox and me is that this body is still breathing, at least for now, for this brief and brilliant period of life and being aware of living. Some days, I forget to look at the fox and walk right by.

— Aleah Sommers, Norwich