The snow is melting rapidly as this new year begins. I have spent the last week finding myself, at least the part that has been hidden, tucked away but still living. She was left behind, waiting for me to rediscover her alive and well. Abandoning me because I had abandoned her, my present self a traitor to her heartfelt and hopeful way of being in the world. She is true resilience; untracked snow. She is impervious to the marks left by the departures of others and the constant heartaches of being alive. She is impervious and resilient, unmarked. But not hardened.
How did I find her you might ask? Through some deep soul searching meditation, angst filled journalling, or, my personal go-to, the gruelling solo journey into the wilderness? Not at all. It just snowed.
Here in this evergreen world, where we expect snowfall to turn to water almost upon impact, or to fall wet and turn into a crusty slushy mass for a day or two, it snowed and stayed cold for a full week. Perfectly timed for the quiet lull between Christmas and New Year. Enough snow to cover the rocks and roots of the forest trails behind the farm, and form a base up into the network of hills beyond that. Enough to make me think of those skis I have, largely unused these past couple of years, packed away in their bag in my tidy little gear shed.
I love walking these trails and do it daily, but the snow is like a beacon to me, showing a path that is iresistable and keeps me out, wandering for hours in the crisp air. The farm is on a slope, and there is an unploughed road in the park behind us, accessible by a 20 minute ski through the snow laden cedars and another 30 minutes up. I make a skin track over and beside the foot-trammelled trails, and one morning early enough to make first tracks in new powder. After reaching the top of that long slope, I make cruising turns on the way down. I carve a snaking line where there are the least footprints and essentially glide almost all the way back to my door. Some days I just let the dogs out and we run laps to the top of the farm and back, through the small winding path just beyond the gate, the snow-covered salal brushing my gore-tex pants. I leave the two gates open so I can slide uninterrupted down the hill. My dog Kimik knows what to do - he is a born ski dog who understands the purpose of the up and covets the chance to run behind my swooping turns on the downs. The other dog, Bolt, looks at me uncomprehending the first time I stop at the top and fuss with my gear before turning downhill. "I thought we were going for a walk?" his look says. But after 3 or 4 runs down he starts to get it and watches me intently when we reach the bottom, his feet dancing in anticipation of another lap.
As I write the snow is melting with the return of the soft Pacific wind and the rains to come later today. I walked up the trail this morning in my rubber boots instead of my mukluks. The cedars had shed their white blankets and the forest shone a familiar dark green against the white of the moisture-laden snow still on the ground. White was starting to give way in spots to the browns and greens of the forest floor. Here and there a salal bush has spring up out of it's snowy encasement.
I was reminded at the end of 2021 that I am more winter than summer. I love the water, but I love the snow, and the cold that comes along with it more. My body comes alive and the reclusive parts of my nature dissipate or are transcended. It tells me to that I have become someone different than who I was ten years ago. It's not about age, but about the fact that I let myself get hung up like loose wool on barbed wire, I let myself lose hope in the existence of a world in which magic is commonplace. My trust in all that is unseen was usurped by things both within, but mostly out of my control.
So I return to what I know myself to be - complete, with the recovery of parts left behind. These moments of true winter brought me back to myself. The crisp air, snow crystals floating down from the branches in a sub-zero night and sparkling in the shine of my headlamp. The world engulfed in a blanket of white, at once muffling and amplifying sound. Hiding and enveloping the green world below. The way Kimik's nose hones in more clearly to the scents the deer and squirrels leave in their tracks, and how I could tell which way he has gone to follow them. Late on New Years eve, I went with a friend to climb the big hill once more, looking out at the lights from the summit and carving out our soft turns down in the final darkness of the old year. Into this new one I will pick up the part of me that is better than the weights I carried in her stead. She is more winter than summer, and so am I.
The thaw is coming, but I will not forget.
