Dreams of Silence

 

Dreams of Silence

There is something about a snowfall that captures the attention and the imagination.  Today counts as a snowfall if you go by my mom’s standard.  She always said that it counted as a snowfall whenever there was “enough snow to track a cat”.  I don’t know the origin of that statement, but I was surprised when I “Googled it” and the phrase pre-populated as I typed it in.  According to several websites this is a regional saying in Wisconsin, Maine, Massachusetts, and Illinois.  I always thought it was just my mom’s as she’s the only one I ever heard use it. 

Our “up north” neighbors near the town of Mountain, about sixty miles north of here, had a couple of inches of snow back in October; I know because I drove up into it when I planned to hunt grouse.  It made for slippery walking, but it is always intriguing to see what stories the snow tells of the critters that had already passed the same way that I walked that morning – meandering deer, snowshoe hares, a tom turkey, and tiny wood mice had all left their mark.  I even cut the track of a grouse and used the snow to lead me to his hiding place under a big white spruce.  The snow helped me find and flush him, but it didn’t help my aim any.  Well, one grouse isn’t much of a meal anyway. 

Why does a rainy day always seem so gloomy, but a snowy day, especially when the flakes come down heavy and fat like they are today, seem so pleasant?  Maybe it's because snow is much more fun to play in than rain.  Maybe it's because snowfalls stir the memory.  It was on a day much like this that I was introduced to cross country skiing. 

My boyhood friend’s family had a cabin in the woods several miles out of Crooked Lake.  That particular day there was a mid-winter snow when the fat flakes sifted down from a windless sky while my friend Pete and I skied back along McCauley Creek Road – really just a two-track forest road - to a little cabin.  There, I was introduced to Caroline who lived there all alone since her husband Charlie had passed away several years previously.  She invited us in, fed us a delicious lunch of homemade baked beans and fresh baked bread as if she had been expecting us.  After lunch Caroline told us stories of living there with Charlie including the story behind the tanned coyote hide that decorated one wall.  Then she invited us to help her feed the birds.  When she walked outside with her hands extended out, full of seed, the chickadees landed all over her.  They were on her hat and coat sleeves and several in each hand.  They didn’t trust us nearly as much, but after patiently waiting with arms extended outwards, we each had a chickadee peck a few seeds from our hands.  It was my one and only visit with Caroline, but I remember it vividly – and the snow that was still sifting down as we skied back home. 

I think there are at least two things uniquely magical about snow.  The first is that snowflakes fall silently.  Oh yes, you can get sleet or freezing rain that chatters against the windows, but real snowflakes fall imperceptively.  My old college professor and mentor, Dr. Bennett wrote a poem about snow falling as “silently as a dream of silence”.      

The other magical thing about snow, especially the first real snow, is the way that it transforms the world.  Snowflakes bring freshness to the grays and browns of the early winter landscape.  Funny how they can do that even though white is technically the absence of all color.  And yet, snow sparkles like diamonds in the bright sun, and its late day shadows stretching away from the setting sun appear blue and even light purple. 

The coffee tastes good today as I watch the snowfall frosting the backyard pines.  I think of my mom, Pete, Caroline and Dr. Bennett.  The chickadees are busy at the feeder.  I recall that image of Caroline covered in chickadees.  I sip and smile and listen intently to the silence – as quiet as a dream of silence.

His Peace <><

Deacon Dan     

Photo by Przemyslaw Zientala on Unsplash