NOVEMBER 18, 2022 – Today I spent many hours in work-related phone conversations and complex email exchanges; headwork related to “life back in the Big Smoke.” For much of the day my back was to the windows, but occasionally, I stole a glance at the snow-covered wonderland outside the Red Cabin. Several times I flipped around the “CLOSED” side of the figurative sign hanging in my figurative shop-door window, then donned my cold-weather gear and entered our “woods in winter.”
As I’d later remark by phone to our son Byron as he was leaving his fast-paced workplace, “You can live here or visit a million times and think you know it well, but you’ll never know the end of its charm and beauty—from the smallest, hidden detail to the grandest, big-screen phenomenon.” On my hikes and side-steps today, I was especially attuned to the infinite sights that properly captured on film or canvas could cover the walls of a sprawling gallery.
As I age and worry about winter slipping and sliding, I understand people’s fear and loathing of ice and snow. And given cold days and colder nights of winter, its heavy darkness and howling wind chills, I “get” why people in the Northland pine for warmer climes during these wintry months. But as a child of the snow and cold, I’ve always embraced this season, finding delight in its visual wonders and pleasure on its playgrounds. I’m not yet so old or ailing that I can’t still dance with winter.
On today’s expeditions throughout our woods and along our lakeshore, I witnessed the paradox of winter. Under a blanket of fresh snow, the land appears to be at rest. In fact, many biological processes, like photosynthesis, are sound asleep. In the animal kingdom, black bears—fairly common in these parts—go into hibernation. Migratory birds have departed for regions south. The sounds of life—insects humming, birds singing (crows squawking don’t count as choristers), poplars murmuring—are absent now. What noises remains—of man and mammals in the woods—is abated by winter’s quilt.
And yet under these same conditions, woodland life springs forth to the observant eye. Today I noticed numerous tracks—deer, of course, but half a dozen other members of the Northwoods menagerie; animals adept at alluding notice the rest of the year now leave tracks everywhere to be seen. In addition, I noticed—way beyond count—individual, sentinel trees and whole groves of giant pines that stand out now that all the deciduous foliage has long fallen to earth and lies covered by the Big White Blanket. As I gawked at these old growth trees, a cold wind swept through their lofty crowns. A haunting aural beauty accompanied the glittering snow dust that drifted down from their boughs. These majestic conifers, so much alive despite the bitter cold, are winter soloists performing elegantly on the same stage where for the rest of the year, they’re anonymous members of a crowded arboreal symphony.
Today I took a thousand photos, but none could capture nature’s imprint upon my soul.
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© 2022 by Eric Nilsson
