Fallen Trees

I love hiking in the winter. I love how things hidden by summer’s growth are revealed. Mosses and lichens shine in the winter sunlight hitting the forest floor. Bird’s nests are visible high in the trees. The life stories of trees are written in skeletal displays of twisting trunks and branches.

Death is on display also. The forest is full of fallen trees. I find them beautiful, their strong bodies feeding the soil and other life forms.

A few days ago I visited a special place in the forest near my home where I have found a consistent strong connection with Arthur. There have been some strong storms since the last time I was there in late September and some more trees came down. I liked standing for a few minutes with the newly-broken trees, honoring their lives and their deaths.

Ode to Winter

Winter is so often maligned. People say it’s ugly: they talk about the sadness of the leaves being gone and the obvious superior beauty of spring, summer, and fall. Of course, they might say, snow is beautiful but that’s about it.

I love winter in a purely aesthetic way. As a child I can remember riding in the backseat of our car, looking out the window at a bare tree silhouetted against a winter dusk sky of pink and orange and deepest midnight blue and being moved by the beauty. That is still today one of the most beautiful things I know. 

Just down the road from my house is a field that climbs a hill, ending in a row of trees along the top of a ridge. Looking at those trees silhouetted against the deepening night of a winter sky is one of the pleasures of my year here. I rarely notice those trees any other time of year—all the foliage blocks the clean geometric lines of the branches.