I am seated on a log at Loon Pond. It just snowed yesterday. There is at least five inches of snow on the ground. All of the color that used to be here has been flattened out. All of the plants are either brown, or gray, or tan. The water used to be blue; it is now a murky brown-gray. The trees have left their foliage behind; all of them now are just a dark gray. And of course, the sky is gray also. It's not one color though: at the zenith, everything is light, and there is almost a bluish tint to it; but, as your gaze approaches the horizon, maybe ten or fifteen degrees above, there is a solid, darker band of dark gray; but, just before the tree-line in the far distance, the sky returns to a very light gray again, with shades of blue.
It seems like everything should be dead by now, and perhaps most of it is, or at least it's asleep, but there's still quite a bit of motion and life here. The wind is the most lively: strong, eastward winds, pushing, billowing the tree-tops, pulling up snowdrifts, creating continuous ripples across the lake surface. Winter is the time of year where the wind is the strongest. It's where most of its power can be unleashed, as there is a distinct lack of foliage and buffer to keep it at bay. Now that we're entering a time when the jet stream is further south, that means that there is also a greater propensity for polar winds to come through, and they have their own character about them. They roar over the canopy, giant powerful blowing feelings. You can actually hear the atmosphere being pushed around, hundreds of feet above your head. It's not just the sound of the tree branches hitting each other, as you can hear it out in clearings also. It's a whistling noise, but it's also a bit of a thundering noise. It's a sensation that instills a feeling of fear, or mortality. I am grateful for that. Something as simple as a gust of wind can remind me of my impermanence. The great, blowing power of the atmospheric winds above me are stronger and more permanent than I am on this earth. If I were up there, I would be swept away and killed very quickly. And even as the trees around me are all dead, they still protect me. I am also grateful for the trees.
Trees are also an excellent source of sound in the wintertime. What species do keep their leaves over the winter, such as sycamore and some species of oak, you can hear the leaves rustling together, like dry paper. They get rocked back and forth by the wind, but even with how feeble and small they are, they somehow find a way of keeping held fast to the tree they belong to. What is it that makes a leaf strong enough to stay attached to a tree even as those atmospheric winds push and pull and try to wrestle them from the branch? The dried out trunks of the trees, bereft of the sap that normally flows through them, also provides an interesting bit of noise. Since the canopies are bare, that means that they can move more freely to-and-fro; they can push against each other. The trunks have a bit more leeway to bend and crack, and you can hear the sounds of their fibers pushing against each other, tight friction. Sometimes you hear a snap. Branches that normally are buffered by thick leaves now get to rest tightly against each other, and when the atmospheric wind blows, you can feel them rub together. In that time you can hear squeaking, barking noises, foxes, bird calls, babies crying. It's fascinating the depth of noises and sounds, almost symphonic. When you find yourself in the middle of a good quality hardwood forest, it's easy to hear all of it. They're little things, but they make you feel a little bit less alone in such a lonely environment.
This little red-headed woodpecker has been keeping me company. He keeps travelling from tree to tree, searching for grubs. I'm not sure how successful he's been yet, but I did see him up on one of the Sentries. It was pecking pretty hard on one segment, and those trees are already full of very deep holes, so perhaps he was able to find what he's been looking for.
I appreciate the sensations of my body in the wintertime. The cold and the wind has a certain way of reminding my body of how frail it is, of how tenuous the line is between myself and non-existence. I feel protected right now by my coat, my insulated pants, my hat, my mittens; the fact that I am a mere five-minute walk from my car, and a mere thirty-minute drive from my home, where there is heating and hot water. But perhaps I wasn't here right now, but I was in the Yukon, or Alaska, or the Northwest Territories. I'm scanning my body, and I'm noting every sensation I feel. Many of them are very uncomfortable, but I don't shy away from the feelings. I'm beginning to lose sensation in my feet from sitting for so long. My toes feel a little bit like voids. It's like my brain understands that there are appendages there, but they forgot that they existed. When one meditates for long enough, they can actually get this feeling through all of their body, like their body just forgets that it exists, and all there is left is just being. My hands are stinging, and they have a bit of a throbbing sensation to them: a nice reminder of my heartbeat. That cold is creeping up; it's almost to my elbows. My head feels fine. It's warm, even though I'm not wearing a hat. It's at points where one feels like they might need to shiver, but shivering is psychosomatic. I understand that my body is not actually that cold, just my extremities, and they'll warm themselves quickly enough. My core is fine, and the longer that I allow myself to feel this sensation, and fight this urge--this instinct--to shiver, the more that I feel like I can steel myself against my mortality, at least a little bit. I am grateful for the pain of my body, the cold. I am grateful for the coming of a proper winter again. I can go outside and feel a little bit unsafe. As I express my gratitude, I can feel my extremities warming. This reinforces my feeling of the mentality of cold over the physicality of it. Or perhaps the numbness is just setting in deeper and I'm losing the sensation of it. It doesn't matter.
I slow my breathing. I breathe in deeply, through my stomach. I breathe as low as I can. I try to breathe into my groin. I try to feel my abdomen swell as I breathe, and I exhale with no pressure, with no energy, no force. I just let my body push the air out as it naturally does, the way that a baby sleeps. For every inhale, I am aware of the pain of my body, and the cold. For every exhale, I release it. I inhale, I feel my feet. I exhale, I don't. I inhale, I feel my shoulders tensing up. I exhale, my arms drop down.