Winter Tree

I am walking.  It is early and the December air is pushing hard against my eyes.  If I ever saw a morning of wintry resignation, this is it.  The trees jut from the hills as frozen investments in the quiet loneliness of winter.  There was no escaping the falling of fall and there is neither no escaping the burning cold of this season–nor the separation from the rest of the world.  Up here in the forests of Northern Minnesota, winter puts a stop on just about everything.  November through March; I must be accepting, too.

I once walked this hill on a rare, 85 degree afternoon in late September.  (Everybody writes that, don’t they? Oh, the inspiration of an Indian summer day.)  It hadn’t rained for weeks.  (It is true, I swear.)  A bunch of leaves had fallen and their crushed lives twisted and swirled up to my nose as I kicked down the path; I kept sneezing.  If I sneezed today, I would get a nosebleed.  The air is exponentially thinner and more dangerous today.  Too much reaction and I’m done for.  Open my eyes too wide and I will cry.  Open my nose, take off my gloves, and my skin will crack.  I will bleed.  Open my mouth at all and I won’t be able to breathe.  Winter can be ironic.  I am bundled up in the best that I can do.

One step, two step, three step, four–what if I don’t walk anymore?  What if I stand here like the trees and let my insides freeze?  I am already numb in my fingers.  I could easily let the chill sink in, sink through me.  From skin, to muscle, to vein and bone.  Let winter become me, let snow come into me.  Or become a tree at least.  If the trees stoically believe in the coming spring, believe in it so strongly that they calmly submit each year to winter’s battering, can I not do the same?  There is a beautiful mystery in this, I am certain.  I’ve decided to stand still for a moment and give it a try, right here beside a frozen river.  I will try to find the place of mystery.

I am standing now in the middle of a history of giant trees who have stood centuries winters.  Snow begins to fall.  I hear barely nothings–a stark difference from the sweet nothings of summer.  Barely flake against flake.  Barely rustle of nylon pants.  Barely thoughts.  I hear the starts of thousands of words, but I can’t catch the endings.  Perhaps it is because endings are so heavy that not even the strong winds of winter can carry them.  Arduous–that is the word I keep hearing about endings.  Or perhaps I am hearing a beginning.  Beginnings are much lighter things to carry.

Could that indeed be spring singing out so gently?  I strain my ears to hear something more.  The wind begins to whistle now and I close my eyes so quietly; I do not want to disturb the unexpected peace I am finding as I become a tree rooted in winter.  I do not want to disturb the hope of my investment.