First Snow

Winter – Week 48 – On Silence and the Return of Winter

In Her Nature is a year long exploration into the healing power of the natural world. Season by season, setting out to awaken the spirit, and rekindle joy. The weekly journal of a neighborhood, its plants and birds and creatures – and how they are helping repair a heart and rebirth a soul.

The snow arrived in darkness, as snow often does, laying itself down in the hours when the world holds its breath between night and morning. I woke to that particular quality of silence that only snow can bring. Not an absence of sound, but a presence of quiet so complete it feels almost sacred. No footprints yet. No evidence of human passage. Just the white world remade while we slept, and the occasional disturbance of a hopeful blue jay in the weeping wild cherry, sending small cascades of powder earthward.

This is the latest true recorded snowfall on record for Boulder. We have been waiting, though we didn’t know how much we’d missed it until it arrived. The season stretched itself thin through October and November, all brittle gold and unseasonable warmth, the trees confused, the ground confused, all of us wondering when it would finally arrive. And then, in the early hours of this December morning, it came: the first snow. Everything white and perfect.

There are rabbit prints near the fence line, early risers, braving the elements before light. I study their trail, the delicate impression of hind feet landing ahead of front, that particular hop-skip pattern that speaks of purpose and survival. They were out here while I slept, while the snow was still falling, making their necessary journeys through the transformed landscape. There is something humbling about this, the way life continues its essential work regardless of weather, regardless of human witness.

The sound of snow is the sound of no sound at all. After months of wind in the dry grasses, after the constant rustle and whisper of autumn, this sudden stillness feels almost impossible. Each flake falls without announcement, accumulating in its slow miracle of gathering. Even the traffic on the far off road seems muted, as if the snow swallows not just the landscape but the noise of our living as well. I stand at the window and listen to this particular quality of peace, knowing it won’t last. The plows will come, the day will begin its work. But for now, there is only this: the world made new, made quiet, made whole.

The light on a snow day is like nothing else. It comes from everywhere and nowhere, reflected and refracted until you can’t quite locate its source. The overcast sky presses close, pearl-grey and luminous, while the ground throws brightness upward. Everything glows with a soft, even radiance that feels almost underwater, as if we’re all suspended in some gentler medium than air. Colors that were sharp yesterday, the red of the barn, the brown of winter grass, now appear muted, softened, seen through gauze. The mountain ash berries, brilliant orange against white, seem to pulse with their own light.

There is this push and pull on snow days, this wanting and not wanting to go out. Part of me longs to stay inside, to watch from safety, to keep my tea warm and my feet dry. The fire is built. The house is warm. Why would I venture into the cold and wet when comfort is here? But another part, the part that has learned to pay attention, that has learned that healing happens in the witnessing, knows I must go. Must walk. Must let the snow fall on my upturned face and feel the particular quality of cold air in my lungs. Must see firsthand what this means, this return of winter, this completion of the cycle.

When I finally do go out, dressed in layers, the cold is immediate and clarifying. But there is warmth here too, paradoxically, in the snow itself. The cows understand this. They are lying down in the pasture, great dark shapes against white, their body heat trapped in the layer beneath them. Snow is insulation, I remind myself. It protects what lies dormant underneath. The earth is warmer tonight than it would be without this blanket. Seeds sleep safely beneath. Roots rest in relative warmth. Even in the depth of cold, there is this secret warmth, this hidden protection.

It is impossible to stand in the first snow and not think about the last. The last snow came in April, late spring snow, wet and heavy, clinging to budding branches and new grass. I was different then. My mind was different, my heart too. My relationship to fear was different. I was still learning to trust my own thoughts, still discovering what emotions I could hold and which ones threatened to overwhelm me, still negotiating with a psyche that had been shattered and was slowly, stubbornly, putting itself back together.

Eight months. That’s how long it’s been since snow last fell. Eight months of growth and healing, of summer heat and autumn cooling, of learning and relearning and learning again. Months of writing these essays, of bearing witness to my own recovery through the lens of the natural world. The last time I saw snow, I was still numb, afraid of so many things. Afraid of my own unraveling. Afraid of the dark places in my mind. Afraid that I might never feel whole again. I moved carefully through my days, gingerly, as if I might shatter again at any moment.

But now, now I walk out into the snow with something approaching confidence. Not recklessness, not the thoughtless movement of before the accident, but a new kind of sureness. I know where my feet are. I know how to shift my weight. I know how to catch myself if I start to slip physically – and metaphorically. This is what one full cycle of seasons has given me: not the absence of fear, but the ability to move through it.

The snow continues to fall, pithering through the morning light. Pithering, the way it arrives without fanfare, accumulating flake by flake until suddenly everything has changed. The fir tree branches bend slightly under the weight. The fence posts wear white caps. The world becomes softer, rounder, gentler.

I think about what it means to welcome something back. Snow is not always easy. It requires work, shoveling, scraping, navigating. It brings cold and wet and all the difficulties of winter. And yet, standing here watching it fall, I cannot help but feel that sense of greeting, of welcoming home a friend who has been long away. Perhaps because it signals completion. Because it means I have survived long enough to see this return. Because it represents something more than itself, cycles and continuity. The way the world keeps turning regardless of our own shattering, the possibility of renewal.

There is something profoundly healing about being held in the rhythm of seasons. Spring comes and then summer and then autumn and then winter, and then, miraculously, impossibly – spring comes again. We do not have to make this happen. We do not have to earn it or deserve it. It simply is, this turning wheel, and we are carried along with it whether we’re ready or not. The snow falls whether I am healed or not. The seasons change whether I have learned my lessons or not. The world continues its work, and we are invited to participate, to witness, to allow ourselves to be changed by the changing world.

As I stand here, face tilted upward, letting the flakes catch in my eyelashes, I realize this is what I have been learning all year long: how to be present to return. How to welcome what comes, knowing it will also go. How to hold both the difficulty and the beauty, the cold and the hidden warmth, the wanting and the not wanting. How to say yes to the snow, to the season, to this particular moment of my particular life.

The blue jay calls out, sharp and insistent against the soft falling. The rabbits have moved on to wherever rabbits go. The cows settle deeper into their snow beds. And I stand here, witness to it all, grateful beyond measure for the chance to see this snow, to be in this body, to have come this far.

Welcome back, winter. Welcome back, snow. I have been waiting for you.

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—> What moments of natural wonder caught your attention this week? Please share your stories and photos in the comments below. Let’s experience nature’s gifts together.

As always, thank you so much for reading and supporting me.

Love,

Jane