The Woods in Winter

I wrote this on one of my lunchtime walks along the Dead River:


   I love the pulse of the woods in winter.  It's slow, subtle, hidden.  There is a sacred quiet, that forbids you to speak or even to think.  It pulls you into it's stillness, it's dormancy.  It's not a defeated stillness, it's one of utter rest, seemingly frozen in time.  Life is there, but it seems encased inside living sculptures.  The only sounds of life are those of a handful of winter birds, and maybe some squirrels.  Even these behave as if they are stowaways wandering about a forbidden museum.
   There is something mysterious about the frozen forest.  With the undergrowth dormant or locked in seeds awaiting spring, the landscape opens up and reveals it's secrets.  There are paths and routes that were before hidden from you.  The landscape itself changes every day as snow accumulates, drifts, and settles.  One day there is evidence that there were other strangers wandering the alien terrain, the next day their traces are gone.  The wind is devoid of the wet slapping of leaves in the summer, or the dry crackling of autumn, nor does it carry the sweet scent of promise in the spring.  It sounds ethereal, distant, with it's hollow whooshing, deterred only by empty branches and conifer needles.  Wind in it's pure and ancient form, able to blow through your very bones.
   There is something exhilarating about wandering through the woods in this season.  You are in a hostile environment, trusting in your ability to return to the safety of the warmer indoor climate.  You feel, on a deep level, "I shouldn't be here," much like Digory and Polly as they explored the frozen and fading world of Charn.  But it is only in this season that, once the risk is accepted, the forest shares her deepest secrets.