Transformed

 

January 4, 2021

 Greetings from the difference,

 Some mornings my mind has one direction, and my body has another.  There are times I feel like an innocent bystander, watching to see what comes of the debate.  The other morning, I woke up early, my body was prepared to run, but whatever was going on in my head suggested the jury was still out.

 I made coffee and enjoyed the first cup, ironically considered taking a nap in my big ass chair. The debate continued between body and mind.  Imagine a puppy wagging and wriggling to go out, and you, the reluctant pet-owner, thinking, cripes, I just took you out, give it a rest.  It was like that.  Part of my hesitation was that I knew it was still winter, still winter since I was out in it the day before.

 From the cold place outside I was called by Nature.  ‘You have to come out!  It’s astonishing.’  I looked through the frosted window at the frozen tableau, curious but still skeptical.  And then laced up and went out to see.

 Outside the world had changed.  Whenever I went to bed it looked like one thing, and now it was something else, some magic had happened.  This is not my first winter, you’d think that by now snow would be mundane.  This was different, beautiful in its simple complexity.  And made only for me.

 It was morning, but still disguised as night, still a full sweep of the hour hand before daylight would matter.  Darkness was changed by the snow, it seemed.  The shadows were pushed back by the brilliance held in the whiteness. 

 Nature had draped the world lovingly in white.  Trees layered in thick frosting, shrubs transformed to new shapes, every sharp edge softened, all coated in winter’s blanket. 

 I ran where I knew a street should be, disguised now by a thick layer of ivory to blend with lawns and driveways and gravel and old leaves, all one thing now.  I put the first tracks in the snow, my legs willing to plow the path, my mind still reticent, but too far in awe to complain.

 I ran into the morning, the first miles almost unaware I was running, so caught up in the creations around me.  Every phone line, every mailbox, each parked car, sculpted into something else.  I came to the path that led along the river and up into the woods, hesitated, and then heard the siren song again.  ‘It’s astonishing.’  And then I saw a single set of footprints ahead of me.

 I ran along the path, the trees crowding in around me, bent low by the weight of the art they carried.  It was darker here, and silent.  Even the river, just yards away, was hushed.  I wondered if the left and right prints ahead of me were somehow the manifestation of the voice that lured me out. 

 The quiet was a presence, a companion.  I could feel the silence, the absence of people or cars or animals, or any note of movement.  The quiet was a gift.  I was aware of my breath, the small squeak of my feet in the frozen path, the only sounds in the morning.  The snow absorbed what might have been the snick and creak and whisper in the woods.

Nature had created on even the tiniest of branches, layered sinew and muscle on every tree to make them into something new, more alive.  It showed the definition of each, sensual, strong, some limbs entwined, others reaching out into the dimness above.

 I came to a curve in the path and here was a small tree that had been transformed into a carved angel.  The lower branches reached out to me, and behind the trunk enormous wings of white, folded forward, arching over, rippling with power, the snow creating layers of feathers and muscle and life, bristling with the urge to raise up and fly.   

 The footprints disappeared and I turned off the path and into the woods, following only the space between bark.  I slowed as I ran up the rise, slipping in the snow, trying to find my way among the roots underneath.  Wrapped in the quiet, surrounded by these strange giant creatures, I ran like I was the only person on earth.

 I stopped at the bluff, breathless from the effort and from the incredible beauty that spread out around me.  Nature, while I slept, had made this gift for me, took the perfect shapes of these living things, and made them something else and something more perfect. 

 And she had changed me.  I had been one person an hour before, timid and unwilling, already convinced I knew what the morning held.  I’d been loathe to venture out, comfortable in my soft things, holding my precious coffee.   And now I was a different person, made more beautiful, in my way, by Nature’s touch. 

 This is a composite of common things, laced with something fantastically remarkable.  It is winter, ordinary enough here, like countless other mornings.  It is a human being, determined to be ordinary, arguing for it in fact.  And then it is all of that changed by what could easily be missed, this beauty, this creation, this love of our world.  The ordinary was transformed by Nature into incredible beauty, and everyone that allowed it was changed by its presence.

 Hope this finds you seeking,

 

David

 

 

 

Copyright © 2021 David Smith