I  Strap on the bear paws. They are antique gut and hickory shoes that are comfortable when eight inches or more of snow cover the fields. I set off on the Hubbard Duck Farm off Hubbard Avenue in Riverhead along the northern edge of the Peconic River Estuary. I begin my trek adjusting the leather straps that have lengthened because they are wet and need to be tightened; I plod off down the right-of-way, over the tracks, beside the woodlands, past the complex of buildings, the incubator house, the long holding pens, the workers house and outhouse, into the snowy fields with tree statues that look like Giocometti sculptures sticking up, stark, smooth sumac with their knobby, jerky stalks and shield scars where leaves held on, past disk harrows rusted and peeping up above snow surface, with goldenrod stalks like pencil lines on white, white paper; the tracks I make cross deer tracks, and  mink tracks I enjoy a welcoming, cheerful chickadee.Thea sun is hidden behind a gauzy curtain of a certain snow sky, the drifts in open fetches, the tall reeds that hide the creek, the catch basins for duck waste, the bittersweet berries dropped  by the passage through thickets of vines. I plod and tramp past collapsed tin-roofed buildings were thousands of white ducks once quacked and fed and drank and shit. What a beautiful way to spend an afternoon; my thighs hurt; I stop to readjust a strap, tighten the binding; Ie enter a maple forest following a deer path; reenter that field with wind in face through sumac groves, and more disk harrows, who have retired on their home ground. I can hear the ducks, see huge what masses of ducks adding waste to the Peconic River. The place awaits a new beginning..maybe condos. high end luxury homes, golf course. Maybe even an open space area where other people can do what I  just wrote about.