WINTER IS ALIVE

A story about winter....

The pristine white snow, soldiered trees standing naked against the north wind, and desolate plots of land that once overflowed with wildflowers all mark the deity of winter. Though the landscape appears dead, the deception lives...

The wind was kicking up from the north as I stumbled along the unclear path of an unmarked trail in a rather dense strip of backwoods. It was painfully cold; even the heavily insulated parka was inept in keeping the warmth contained.    Snowdrifts rising six feet and more totally surrounded me, the brisk winds churning up small white tornadoes of the white powder, making my journey more difficult than I could have ever envisioned.

My breath was coming in short pants, half due to my body’s reaction to the cold, the other half due to the intense physical exertion. My wool facemask was stiff and damp, the vapors from my mouth becoming immediately frozen as they hit the blustery cold.

I was in desperate need of a break, for I calculated that I had been traveling five miles straight, perhaps more in the aftermath of the blizzard, pausing only once. One tends to lose track of time, and of distance-traveled in such bitter circumstances. I did know that my legs cramped from the cold, I was certain my eyes had frozen, and my lungs ached from sucking in the brisk air.

Searching the dead of the woods, I spied a fallen tree that spanned a good fifty feet across the white blanket of new snow. Slowly, I made my way to the tree and settled in, attempting to huddle in an effort to capture what body heat I had left in me.

It felt good, just to stop moving for a moment. Only a couple more miles and I’d be there. Only an idiot would run out of gas ten miles from home on the empty back roads, I silently chastised. And I couldn’t have chosen a more inopportune time, a time when this part of the world was wrapped in death.

A screech from the top of a tall naked tree collected my attention and I gazed at the big brown bird searchingly, then to his left where a huge nest rested in a crag. I then noticed several more nests suspended from the tree, obvious signs that life had once existed in these woods.

Then it stuck me, that though these woods were wrapped in the arms of winter’s peaceful sleep, not all slept, and certainly, not all were dead. With this in mind, I rose and as I continued along the uncut path that led towards home, I made a point to identify the living haunts of nature along the way.

I saw perhaps hundreds of birds, all shapes, all colors, flying in the gray edges of the sky, clipped onto tree limbs, and standing in the stream that ribboned to the right of my journey. At one point, I caught sight of the tail end of a fish that jumped up into the vapors hovering over the stream, then swiftly vanished.

Flashes of green echoed here and there, peeping through the white layers of snow, from the ground, from the trees, from the brush.

As my warm house waved into view, the sun was beginning to make an entrance through the fog of the gray sky. Home. Finally home.

And as I entered its warmth, and headed towards the roar of a crackling fire, another thought struck me. Winter itself was alive, the snow, the gray sky, the slothful stream – etched into the fabric of our living world.

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