I stalk along watching above as trees barren of foliage sway
in a wind that I cannot hear. Towering sentinels with sunken sap gelled behind
bark skins stand in cold and silence, their gnarly limbs as bent and twisted carcasses,
but still living, and they watch how I journey within their realm.
And I know the woodlands are full of life yet the living
sequester themselves in fear and in comfort to avoid the icy hold of winter’s
grip. A grip that does not claw with icy fingers piercing down through my neck
or up my sleeves, but that cloaks me and chills me from the outside in, until
there is no warmth, but always the hope of warmth.
I look down. Tracks of denizens, long trails searching from
far beyond their origins and slinking to where they disappear into a distant
gray curtain that is broken only by flecks of lighter gray. Movement, color,
sound ... All lay denuded, insipid, and silent in a frigid kingdom of snow and ice.
And the bitter wind stings the face, cracks the lips, and
forces the eyes to well with freezing tears. I walk with a heaviness that draws
my cold feet to the earth like an icy magnet; they are numb, unwieldy, save for
the ache of slowly freezing toes.
But I stand and I listen. Deliberately. There is a creak of
limbs grating against each other; a snap of an ice-laden branch. I hear the
rumbling of a silent wood broken but by the rapping of russet leaves of long
dormant oaks, tapping on bark as icy fingers on glass, shivering as they await
their mortal descent to the forest
floor.
Homeward, I walk on, rapt in muse of a realm where the language
is a tongue of a sharp ear, a keen eye, and a clear scent. Here where God
dwells, the road, not given, is shared. And I continue on into the wilds I
love, aware and attentive—and I belong.
