Learning to Believe in Winter

I think of the soft tread of presence in the forest, the exhortation to tread lightly on the land.

From the edge of my eye I see a coal tit flit in the high tops of the trees and I think that should be me. I think, more than that, I should learn the knowledge of the blink of an eye, the winking out of the spark of a fire into the dark night. I should learn of the humility, the wisdom of impermanence and oneness. That I am far less and much more than an electron whizzing to infinity.

And then, as I walk on the path, feeling the soil crunch beneath my boots in its icy casing. As I walk and slip on the bare wood of a tree trunk and look up into the blueness and the ice scrapings, that are paintings of clouds that herald the later greyness to come. I think, as I stare through the dark trees to the bright dazzle of the winter sun that I don’t want to tread softly, I don’t want wisdom.

I want to be a supernova lighting up the galaxy in the caverns of perception. I want to be an icicle lit by the sun, I want to be an icicle melting, dripping pure drops of water into the wintry vastness. I want to be beautiful and memorable. I want to sketch beauty from moss on a tree trunk and I want people to gasp first before I fade and then I will understand that the gasp was meaningless, that the spark from the fire was doomed to the blank night and the silence that showed that no one saw its dizzy ascent to its sudden end.

After this brief burst of anxiety, this brief gap in my confidence. I scrape resin from a pine trunk and I smell it and breathe such a scent; a heady, piercing, rich, sinuous smell. The resin is not runny it doesn’t leave a sticky stain on my hands, instead, it crumbles between my fingers and scatters on the track below me and I re-join my clichés that reassure me so much.

I look at our party with their notebooks and preoccupied expressions and realise that I am so busy trying to observe that I have forgotten to see. I think of our chatter like the birds that flit in trees now that the days are lengthening and I wonder at everyone’s thoughts and worries and yearnings.

Brief bursts of energy that must surely affect the balance of the scene around us. Alter the way we walk and what we touch and how the leaves and the grasses splinter in their white frost coating beneath our heels. I think; “I have forgotten your names, I want to be wise, I want to shine” but really I want to disappear from the pressure of here.

I slip my hands over the ice of a split branch and it melts where my fingers find the grain of the wood. I remember the tight solidity of the three stranded rope that I ran my fingers over and pressed to find that what was once fluid has now matted into something unyielding but still retaining a use now, as an outdoor banister. As I reflected on incongruity I wonder about my own disordered mind. I wonder; do the mice lying in the nests of their beds worry about the future? Do they shrink at the thought of the breath of the vixen, the swoop of an owl or the talons of a buzzard? Do they feel their offspring snuggled up besides them and smile with warmth at the thought of their children? Do they lie awake worrying? Or do they sit in the daily, ticking, moment of movement and tension, sleeping when necessary, eating when needed not thinking, not aware in any way that I would ever understand.

My cheek bones are a wee bit numb, my stomach is chilly because I didn’t close my jacket, my fingers have a tinge of red to them . I can feel my feet in my boots, the snugness of my socks, the smoothness of the lining. Each footfall is sure on the ground, the gravel crunches, the white rimmed bark on the path flexes, the mud is mainly solid with grainy ice heaving it up above the soil. Nearby are the trees that have fallen in the latest set of gales. The earth and the rocks spill from their exposed roots, pale scars appear where trunks have split and branches fallen; pools of water rest in the trenches where the trees used to stand and of course the bugs will feast on the rotting wood, the toadstools flourish but I miss their dignity.

Someone says that the cotton wool clouds have washed her face, removed her mascara wiped the make up clean and we laugh about it but it strikes a chord with me. I think of long walks along the white sand strands at Nairn, where the sand whispers in the wind, the razor shells crunch under my feet and the gulls sit hunched up as white specks on the sand bars. This is where I walk and my thoughts flutter frantically in the loneliness until they are wiped clean and I feel only the sweat of my shirt on my back and the warmth of my muscles in my legs.

I think of when I used to sail, of gales at sea and the lazy rise of spray at the bows that whips back in the wind to splash in my face, where I taste the salt taste on my lips, feel the slippery lace of seawater on my fingers, flex and balance as the boat leaps and flows and crashes, turning the wheel, rising to the green water, falling over a wave into the stomach turning trough. And I think, when I used to do that, I had no fear, the wind whipped in my hair. I concentrated, every task had a focus, even if it was the simplicity of making coffee when every surface changed angle all the time, when the jars slid and the cabin sole was slippy and the steps up the companion way, a roller coaster and the smile of the helmsman and the crew a wonder and their reply unheard in the roar of the wind in the rigging. At these times my body rejoiced and exulted and I felt alive, alive and brimming with danger and wildness. Connected to the world around me, forgetting to puzzle at the fact that fires light and then die, that frost sparkles and then melts leaving the ground dark and slimy, forgetting to expect the dark clouds to follow the blue sky.

Remembering this, I look across the loch at the three hooper swans that are staying the winter. I remember the story we have just been told about the swan that visited some years ago and was left behind because it couldn’t fly. And I celebrate my joy at the news that when the other swans returned it was like a family reunion and I mourn the fact that the lonely swan became lonely again and eventually wasted away and died and I mourn my own loneliness and the past that remains a mystery to me and which I prefer not to talk about and then I look about me, look at my friends here remember my friends at home, look at these new strangers and glow a little. I decide one day I will catch fire and twirl into the sky not knowing where I will go or what will happen. Not caring at all.