- In the snow across the river.
Solitude surrounds me.
For some the silence is oppressive. The dread of being alone, away from close walls and ringing phones, tight schedules and someone to hear if you cry out. An uncomfortable and odd void filled only with a transparent cold air of time to think, to feel, to listen, to dream. The need for bright lights and loud noises eases ones mind like the comfort in numbers. We are not taught to be solitary. We are social creatures, they tell us, and perhaps it is so.
What do you do, they ask? As they look around for the TV and shops and parties and a barrage of stimulations to drown out the hidden hum of the mountain.
Quiet, I ask them. Be still and listen. But they are gone before the clear notes ring out. Don’t you hear laughter in the sound of the river gurgling beneath the snow? Soothing words in the wind dancing through the deep black timber? And feel the arms that wrap around you as the low light of the sun spreads across your shoulders and gently caresses your exposed cheeks?
The wide open spaces of the mountain are washed in white. It is vast, overwhelming. Blinding. We yearn to find our place. We learn to listen within. Words need not be spoken. The wind answers the muffled song of the river reverberating from far below her winter coat of ice and snow.
I dreamed I was floating on a sea of snow, soft and languid like waves in the middle of tranquil waters. The river had brought me here, carried me away to settle my soul. To allow me my solace found only within.
The cold places around us show us the cold places within us. We confront our darkest hours, our deepest dreams, when we crawl under ground and roll tight back into the world from which we emerged.
And nothing else matters but the one flake of snow which has floated from a far away cloud and landed so perfectly upon my glove. I stand for a moment and stare at this wonder. Few other flakes fall. Solitary diamonds in this glimmering sea of simple white jewels. What greater riches do we need to seek?
The snow turns to diamonds on the needles of the blue spruce.
The simple magnificence of nature: crystals of snow.