It was one of those winter days when the storm that had
blown through, the day before, coated every tree and bush in a clinging
frosting of brilliant white. It was a day when the earth dazzled in this cloak
of ice crystals, and black and white became the only colors available. The snow
gave a hushness to the forest that even the birds and animals respected, for
they were nowhere to be found that morning. It seemed almost sacrilegious for
me to walk through it because of the crunching snow beneath my boots—as if I
was destroying the serenity Mother Nature had bestowed on it.
Winter has a beauty and a purpose that sometimes transcends
our reasoning powers. We spend too much time cursing the cold and ice, and too
little time enjoying the things that are only here for a couple of months. As I
sat on a fallen tree that morning, enjoying the peacefulness of the forest, a
gentle breeze blew through the woods; a crescendo of powdery snow fell from the
boughs of the pine trees to the forest floor below, and for a moment, I felt as
if my world had tipped and I was a tiny figurine in an immense snow globe. The
silence I was respecting had been broken by this, but only for a brief moment.
The surrounding snow cover gave me a vision of snugness in the forest around me—as
if it and all God’s creatures were tucked in, safe and sound, from the cold
winter winds that would surely come.
Yoko Ono said, “In
spring we remember our innocence, in summer our exuberance, in fall our
reverence. But it’s only in winter, when we remember our perseverance.” Winter
can be a cruel thing to those who don’t understand it and who don’t take the
necessary precautions. But for those who do, and who learn to live in it, and
with it, it’s as much a religious experience as an inconvenience. Each season
on this earth has its own form of beauty, and to miss the contrast of winter,
from the other seasons, can leave a hole in your heart and a memory that can’t
be duplicated in any other way. It’s a wondrous time, when we realize that the
sun hasn’t shunned us for no reason at all—it has a purpose indeed.
When I was kid growing up, there was a certain aroma that
came from the burning oak and birch in the wood stove at our house. It smelled
more like heat than any other explanation for the word. It was a heat that seemed
to radiate around the room without any fancy fans or filters. It was as close a
match as you could get to the heat from the sun. My father, who cut wood all of
his life, said “it always warmed you twice. Once when you cut it, and once when
you burned it.”
But back to the woods and my love for nature. I am a
Christian man and I go to church because that’s where most people feel the
closest to their God. When I am out in nature, however, I have similar
feelings. You see, despite the beauty of our churches, nothing can compare to
the beauty of the earth. Man has built immense stone cathedrals, with lofty
spires that reach high into the sky, piercing the clouds but they pale in
comparison to the stark beauty of the earth.
