Donut County

Barley, a dog, tromps across light snow in a vast, empty parking lot toward the wheel tracks of someone having pulled a u-turn in the snow.

I spend so little time dealing with snow that when I spotted these circular tracks, my mind immediately conjured an image of Troubled Youth cruising around the snowscape and recklessly doing donuts in empty parking lots. I only realized later how absurdly I had misread what was probably instead a tired and cautious commuter pulling into a parking lot and turning around to avoid a mild hill that might be a little icy. Barley, by contrast, wasn’t fooled for a second - I’m 100% sure she would have stopped to sniff burned rubber reside, and these modest tire tracks didn’t warrant even a passing whiff.