My mom had known about my birding adventures and annual list of bird sightings for a while. She was not a birder, but her curiosity finally eclipsed her reluctance, and she started accompanying me on some of my birding outings a few years ago.
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.