A Truly Wintry Walk Through the Woods

This evening on Ul. Okręźna

The snow was falling softly and softly falling, to misquote Joyce, as I left my language class at EC Sikierki this afternoon.

I usually take the 108 and get off at ul. SW Bonifacego to change for the 185 or the 148 to arrive somewhere in Ursynów. However, after 40 minutes of waiting for the 108 alongside a little band of anonymous dark figures sheltering from the heavy snow, I was starting to get impatient. There’s only so long you can stand when it’s -5 before your body heat is sucked from you by a stealthy but relentless thermal pickpocket. The Babcias amongst us started to mutter darkly about possible wypadki and other assorted problems caused by the afternoon’s heavy fall of snow. I set a limit of ten minutes, then another ten, before deciding to walk to Bonifacego on a route I’d taken previously, before winter began, which I documented here.

But before all that, I had the powerful reverse- Eureka moment I’d predicted a while ago when I realised how well spent the 329zl I paid for my buty had been. Dry, warm and with a good grip. A good investment and not worth scrimping on, especially not at times like now.

Shuffling off into the distance I left my unknown companions behind me, turning occasionally to check I hadn’t left at just the wrong time as the 108 pulled up to the slightly more patient. Fortunately, for my decision-making's self esteem, that didn’t happen and I presume they are still there, waiting, stamping feet and sniffing and snorting, taking calls on their mobiles or simple standing silently.

As I strode down Augustówka I remembered the time six or so weeks ago I had come down here, thinking about the direction my life had taken, drinking in the sights and enjoying the slight frost in the air. As I thought about that time the going got harder and harder on a path not often used by anyone (it's an industrial site after all). The snow hid many perils and I found myself sinking ankle deep into frigid mud, tripping and slipping on branches, stones and frozen ground. After a few hundred metres a splintered cracking sound suddenly announced my arrival in the middle of a large pond. I was standing perilously on the ice that had formed above it.

 

I froze, noticing for the first time the boot shaped hole in the ice to my right made by someone a bit heavier who had made the same mistake walking across the anonymous white carpet. Regretting all my recent binges on Makowiec I managed to reach terra firma by leaping the danger like a demented Chuck Norris on novocaine, before circling the Czerniakow reservation via ul. Zawodzie.  I paused only to take pictures of the disused factory on the way, (more ghoulish now in the shadows than ever)  which I had pictured in my previous post.

It was only three or four kilometres but it felt like hours.