Midwinter Walks
“Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.”
Henry David Thoreau
A dangerous sub-zero freeze currently grips our nation’s Midwest, but here in the Southeast, January’s temperatures have hovered safely near the freezing mark. I venture out to walk on the greenway or in the surrounding woods daily, even when it means taking cover from an icy rain under my tattered umbrella.
The last couple of days have been sunny, the sky a brilliant blue. I dress in layers and always wear a scarf, gloves, and hood, if not a hat. Still, the wind on my face is brisk. Those first inhalations of frigid air feel prickly in my nostrils and cause my sinuses to ache, but the sensation quickly passes. I breathe more deeply. Soon, my head begins to clear and my insights quicken.
How often do we comment that we need to clear our minds? Or clarify our thoughts … or crystalize our ideas? For me, an invigorating walk in the cold does exactly that. The clean, low-angled light of January glistens off the frost and brings the external world and my internal world into sharpened focus.
There’s a “clarity” tool in the photo processor Lightroom that acts much like frost crystals do: it adds contrast to edges within a digital photograph, making images seem more three dimensional. Bright edges get brighter; dark edges get darker. The picture looks sharper because each outline is clearly defined.
Without the distraction of green, the textures of nature come alive. The weathered bark of trees, deer tracks frozen in mud, scalloped fungi encrusted on logs. A fragile film of ice covers wet areas of the trail, and there’s a scattering of icy shards on the periphery of puddles.
As I walk, frozen leaves emit a muffled crunch, distinctly different from the potato-chip-crispiness of dry autumn leaves. There’s a notable absence of birdsong.
Colors are muted. Gray, barren trees cast elongated shadows. Sketched starkly against the winter sky is a tangled interplay of bare branches.
The old hymn “In the Bleak Midwinter” comes to mind. Such a melancholy word: “bleak.” Lacking vegetation, desolate, raw, harsh… It’s enough to make anyone stay holed up indoors where it’s warm and comfortable.
But even in the bleak midwinter, nature generously invites us outside and into the present moment, and rewards us with clarity, beauty, and restoration. I for one don’t want to miss these gifts. Rather than brace myself against the cold, I’m learning to embrace the cold. And to always wear a warm hat when doing so.
“I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.”
John Burroughs
