There is something for you in the winter woods. Maybe you’ve missed it. Maybe the cold or snow or ice have kept you away and so the secrets are still there. Waiting.
See, a winter hike is an invitation to something rare. The cold drives everyone else inside. You rarely see anyone else on these walks. And if you do, you exchange a nod and know you are cut from the same cloth. The silence is golden and so little interaction is required. A winter hike is an isolation that is welcome, a solitude that fills you up slowly and sweetly.
And the sounds. If you can, hike near water. The sounds of the ice shifting and changing are ancient. So foreign to our summer-tuned ears. On this hike, the one we took last weekend and that I photographed sparingly, our kids marveled at the odd croaks and groans that stretched over the lake. We could have stood still all day, captured in the desire to hear more, new, different.
If you are fortunate, and there is just the right amount of snow, patched in places, gone in others, your gift is even greater. In my mind, the childlike crunch of snow under my boots is the sister sensation to sand through my toes. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. The gentle push of your body into the melting earth. The knowledge that this little frozen gift is here for you but may have melted forever away before another human passes this way.
I get it. It’s hard to get out when the thermometer plummets. It is easier to stay inside and bake and cuddle. And all that is important and valuable too. BUT. Cold and ice and snow. If you haven’t tried it recently, may I be so bold as to say you simply must?
The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.
-”Snow Dyst” by Robert Frost
