A large shape was on top of the otherwise thin and angular branch and looked slightly out of place. But it was not out of place at all. It was an owl.
On the south side of Chicago, I walked across snow-covered sand on an icy lakeshore. The ice that had formed where water met beach lowly creaked as water moved underneath it. The winter day was cold, but, thankfully, there was a lack of wind whose harshness would have only been magnified by traveling across Lake Michigan.