This is my post for the contest by @hive-127788 on the topic Amazing Nature Contest: Thematic Challenge - #1/1/22 - The first walk in nature this year.

The year 2022 is rapidly gaining momentum. How long has it been the first day of the year? And now a week has passed. Today is January 8th.
My house is located next to the forest. It would seem that I find myself in the bosom of nature immediately leaving the house. But... It happens in summer. Now it's not easy to get into the forest, because there are completely no roads in my favorite forest. There is a lot of snow around.
Today is the first day when I decided to take a short walk through the forest. To be precise, recently driving by car along a bypass road, I noticed that a small path, trodden by someone through the forest, leads from this very highway towards my house. It seemed very interesting to me and today in the afternoon I decided to walk along this very path.
By the way, the longitude of a sunny day in our region has increased by 24 minutes! And now it is 6:42 minutes.



So, I set foot on this path. I don't even know what's going to happen there. More precisely, what if there is a dead end and there is no road? And then I will have to climb back up the mountain again. But I am ready to check this route.

The beginning of the current winter turned out to be very snowy. If the first 3 months are as snowy as November and December of last year, there will be a big flood in the spring and the water will flood the floodplain valley. But it's too early to think about it yet. But such thoughts come when looking at trees. They are all covered with big snow.



The branches of trees, especially coniferous, are strongly inclined to the ground. Look, friends, it is clearly visible that lumps of snow often fall from the trees and they leave traces around the path.

Sometimes it is necessary to raise your head up and look at the treetops. I really like them and they seem beautiful. Some trees lean on their sides. Probably, this is happening again because of the large snow on the branches.
This is an old forest. The trees are tall here. Here near my house, the trees are still not very tall. They are about 10 years old. And these trees probably saw the beginning of the last century.






I was lucky. I realized that the path would definitely lead me to the village. There is very little left, only 300 meters and I will go to the last house. Probably, this path was trodden by the owner of this house. He has a German Shepherd and probably walks with her here. I saw dog tracks in the snow.



Under the log or bypassing the log? How do I go? As I got closer, I realized that I could walk under this log. This log wasn't here in the summer. But in the summer, the road was dug up so that trucks with sand would not drive along this forest road. Large dump trucks from the quarry drive through our village and carry sand. Some drivers decided not to follow the route they had planned, but to take a short way. Residents of the alley blocked the road. They built this road to their homes from the main road themselves. Dump trucks will spoil it very quickly. And drivers don't look at the forbidding signs.












These trees look great. They are like arrows pointing upwards. The snow has pressed the branches hard against the tree trunks and that's why they seem so thin and tall.






That's where this trail is. These are the trees!
I love my village. I chose this place myself to build my house.