Snow Beguiled
Your bed is an illusion of bliss with sheets that sting, whip against my face, steal my breath, and cloak fathomless depths that swallow my life in moments.
Snow is a huge part of my life. I know it well. Living on a Canadian mountain top does that to a person.
Snow has given me beautiful art, a few of my greatest adventures, and some of my darkest hours.
Snow has kept me trapped many a day and night when it falls heavy, incessantly and the plows cannot make it up our mountain until the next morning.
Snow has also been a beautiful friend that shakes my window, calling me out to walk through a forest of alabaster-sculpted trees.
On mornings from December to March, I am often lost in a world of soft, frigid, white. My mountain is under heavy snow and fog. On these days, I strap on snowshoes, grab my dogs and head out. We break trails. There are no other humans that cross our path. On these whitest of days, when sound is muted by thick fog, families of ravens call to me and to each other in voices that sound like a symphony of varied species: squaks, meows, bellows, barks and coughs. These mornings are like dreams and yet they are the truest of days.
On the darkest days of winter, I am reminded that snow is as dangerous as it is beautiful. These are the days when life and death dance under sheets of white.
It was deeply humbling this past December when I became disoriented and lost in white-out blizzard conditions on a ski hill that I was unfamiliar with.
I am still shaken from recent ski and toboggan accidents in my family. However, thankfully, our injuries are healing well.
Impossible to resist its icy kiss.
Leave a Reply