Morning Walk With Camera
On this mild late December morning I took a walk in the neighborhood with my camera. The skies were cloudy and the landscape somewhat stark with lots of white snow covering the ground and dark bare trees and bushes along the way. We have finally lost the beautiful coating of frozen snow on everything that created such a winter wonderland all around us.
All things are meltable, and replaceable. Not at this moment, but soon enough, we are lambs and we are leaves, and we are stars, and the shining, mysterious pond water itself.
― Winter Hours: Prose, Prose Poems, and Poems
Still, I found scenes of beauty and charm along the way. I discovered a snow person in the middle of a nearby park. In the summertime children often play baseball in this park, but now it’s a perfect place to build a snow person. Later in my walk I saw our neighbors out in their backyard making a giant snow sculpture with the children watching in awe and adding little lumps of snow to the sculpture.
It always amazes me how warm temperatures just above freezing feel after a prolonged below zero wind chill week. By the end of my walk I had shed my hat and gloves and I was wishing that I had worn a thinner coat.
The Hidden Lives of Trees
When I looked closely at a tree trunk near the path I saw a flower-like lichen growing in its bark. I smiled when I saw it — such a tiny benediction of beauty waiting to be seen.
The sleeping trees along the path are silent and quiet. There is not even a small breeze to stir their branches this morning. Still I feel as if they are alive and aware that I am walking beneath them and sending them love as I walk. I believe that I can learn many lessons from listening to the trees in winter.
I am one of those who has no trouble imagining the sentient lives of trees, of their leaves in some fashion communicating or of the mossy trunks and heavy branches knowing it is I who have come, as I always come, each morning, to walk beneath them, glad to be alive and glad to be there.
― Winter Hours: Prose, Prose Poems, and Poems
The path I walked was packed down by many feet that had walked there before me. I felt grateful to those who went before me and created such an easy path to walk on. When I left the path, my boots sunk into snow almost to my knees in places. It was tricky stepping into the deep snow and not knowing how deeply my boot would sink with each step. The well-trodden path reminded me that there are trail breakers in every part of life who smooth the way and show us a way. I am thankful for all who go before me smoothing the way.
Though my walk is nothing special, at the same time it is food for my soul. I soak in the sights, smells and sounds of nature and the ineffable sense of being held by something much larger than myself.
To believe in the soul—to believe in it exactly as much and as hardily as one believes in a mountain, say, or a fingernail, which is ever in view— imagine the consequences! How far-reaching, and thoroughly wonderful! For everything, by such a belief, would be charged, and changed. You wake in the morning, the soul exists, your mouth sings it, your mind accepts it. And the perceived, tactile world is, upon the instant, only half the world!”
― Winter Hours: Prose, Prose Poems, and Poems
Here’s hoping that you are able to get outside for a walk on this somewhat balmy December day.
May you walk in beauty.
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