I walked along the snow-covered riverbank on Wednesday.

I decided to take a walk in the WINTER today. After a whole day and night of non-stop snowfall, the sky finally cleared up around 1:00 p.m. The frost was getting stronger — somewhere between -9 and -11 °C — and my breath immediately turned into thick white steam. I decided that there was no point in sitting at home anymore, quickly got dressed, and went outside.

My first impression was that the snow was already ankle-deep, and in some places even higher. My boots immediately got stuck, and with each step, the white mass piled up on top and on the sides, sticking to my shoelaces. In two minutes, all my shoes turned into white “valenki” — the snow clung tightly to the leather, froze at the seams, and crunched with every movement. I walked slowly, enjoying this characteristic sound: crunch... crunch... crunch... It was like walking on dry sugar sand, only very cold.

I went to a local river — small, winding, with wide reeds on both sides. In summer, this place looks normal, even a little overgrown and cluttered. But winter changes everything beyond recognition.

When I went down to the riverbed, I saw what I had come for. The river was completely frozen. The ice lay flat, sometimes milky white, sometimes with dark transparent windows through which the depths could be seen. But most importantly, all this ice was generously covered with a thick layer of snow. Not wet, not heavy, but light, dry, almost feathery. The snow lay in a perfectly even blanket, with only a few small tracks visible here and there — probably from birds or foxes. It looked as if someone had covered the river with a huge white blanket with long pile.

I took out my phone and started filming. First, some wide shots: the white ribbon of the river disappearing around the bend, framed by equally white banks. Then I moved closer to the reeds. Winter reeds have their own unique aesthetic. The stems had turned yellow, but the tops were still sticking up. I took close-up photos.
While I was fiddling with my phone, my gaze involuntarily wandered further — to the opposite bank. About four or five hundred meters away, I could see the silhouettes of houses. The day was clear, but with a light winter haze, so the houses looked a little blurry, fairy-tale-like. Between the houses, trees loomed dark — tall poplars and willows, bare and covered with frost. Lower down, closer to the water, low winter bushes grew: sea buckthorn, wild rose, and vines. All this created a typical Ukrainian winter landscape — a white field, a frozen river, distant houses, lonely silhouettes of trees and bushes sticking out of the snow.

I stood there for about ten minutes, just listening to the silence. Sometimes a dog barked somewhere in the distance, sometimes a crow flew by and cawed hoarsely. Nothing else. Only my own breath and the crunch of snow under my feet.
Suddenly, I wanted to leave something of my own here, something small and temporary. I put on my gloves, bent down, and began to write the word HIVE in large letters on the clean snow. I did it slowly and carefully so that it would be even. The snow was loose but held its shape well. The word HIVE, written on the white bank of the frozen river, with reeds covered in snow behind it, smooth ice, distant houses, and the sky already beginning to turn pink as evening approached.

On the way home, my shoes were full of snow, but inside they were warm. Sometimes it is simple things like this — a walk in the middle of winter, a photo of a snow-covered river, a word written with a finger in the snow — that make the day truly alive and important.

I translated from Ukrainian us DeepL.com