The first portage is blocked by snowfall.

Not so much snow there. What's that over the trail? Doesn't look like a tree?

Pile from a plow in the parking lot during the winter?

It's a north-facing spot, and it's the plow pile. Aberrant finding but still a fun harbinger. A good omen in my book.

I always get fooled, year after year and decade after decade, by those parking lot piles of snow at shopping malls in May that are encrusted in dirt and look like piles of coal.