With snow still here and there in West Tisbury, I went walking on Wednesday along the Mill Pond. Main roads, of course, have been swept clean, but in woods and fields there remains snow to crunch through — a favorite winter pastime of mine. And it crossed my mind that there was likely to still be untrammeled snow beside the Mill Pond where the Allen M. Look memorial bench sits, honoring that late selectman who served his town from 1969 until his death in 1977.

There was snow, indeed, but, to my surprise, it was not untrammeled, suggesting to me that I am not alone in enjoying walking through snow along the pond in winter. Clearly there are others like me who enjoy looking out across the pewter ice, watching ring-necked ducks diving for small invertebrates and seeds where the ice has cracked and there is a hole big enough to bob into.

Alongside the tracks of human boots and dog paws, there were rabbit tracks, of course, and the long thin line that suggests a muskrat tail. This is also the time of year, according to naturalist Augustus Ben David 2nd, when otters travel from Island pond to Island pond, so the long, flat lines I saw beside paw prints may well have been tracks of an otter. Time was when I would see otters often crossing the Edgartown-West Tisbury Road on their way to a Mill Pond winter visit.

It was too cold to sit on the Look bench, but not too cold to stand awhile and look across the pond. It was frozen near the road, but open and dark green farther along it, with white houses and the police station across it. It was relatively early morning when I was walking — too soon for much in the way of trucks and cars to be speeding by and shattering the tranquility of the scene. I walked as far as I could, under bowed branches and bittersweet vines.

For seven years, I lived in the parsonage above the Mill Pond and it was a favorite walking destination of my husband, Tom Cocroft and his calico cat, Groucho. Together, delightedly, they would descend from the parsonage down through the underbrush mornings and late afternoons to watch the ducks and the swans that lived there then and the Canada geese that frequented the pond waters. Groucho would be on the alert for baby rabbits and mice and unwary birds, I am sure. For Tom, a painter and a naturalist, it was the still beauty of the pond in both summer and winter and the variety of its denizens that held him in thrall. With delight, he would recount how the swans were nesting or a family of otters gamboling at the pond edge.

What a pity it would be, I could not help saying to myself, if the Mill Pond was gone — a pity not just for me but for those others, humans and animals, whose tracks I had been following in the snow.

Last week, I was given a blue and white Save the Mill Pond pin to wear. When I came home, I made sure that I pinned it where others could see it on my coat.