Winter Holds Up Nature's Mirror

Winter: Week 3 2025 - On Frozen Waterfalls, Wandering Bears, and Finding Home in Wild Places

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.

It’s now the middle of January and the middle of winter in Colorado. The first day of the new year finally ushered in a longed-for and much-needed hibernal season. So now, the days implore us to stay home, drink tea, and wrap ourselves in layers that speak of sanctuary against the biting winds and drifting snow. It’s a welcome time. We all require some stillness and silence to rest and prepare.

Before this, the land held its breath. Unseasonable warmth and parched earth set our nerves vibrating with wildfire anxiety. The truth of our existence here now reveals itself: every season carries flame's potential, even December's darkness. It was so warm during the days and nights of the holidays that a bear still roamed a neighboring town, refusing to sleep. Even the daffodils had been deceived, their tender green fingers reaching skyward months before their time. My heart ached watching them.

To nurture anything in Colorado requires courage. Snow can claim May gardens without apology. By June, triple-digit heat bakes the land through September's final breath. Now, a polar vortex grips us in its palm - three consecutive days at thirty below, wind stealing warmth faster than flesh can generate it. It’s the kind of weather where only a hot bath can return your body to warmth.

I’m continually struck by the resilience of the plants and creatures of this wild place and wonder if I’m actually a Coloradan-still-in-training.

We moved here from Northern California at the start of the pandemic, though not by design. Our planned move date, booked in January for mid-March, became the first day of the COVID-19 lockdown. On that morning, we started the drive across the country in a daze. Hotels closed in our wake. Gas stations filled our gas tank and our bellies. It felt apocalyptic, but things would get far worse.

We spent the first two years of our new home in a bubble, learning to live in this new place from within our four walls. Arrived, yet not yet arrived. Home, but not yet at home. Relieved, and not yet relieved.

My husband’s work for the year was canceled as we drove those thirteen hundred miles. One by one, a client’s phone call, an email, a WhatsApp message said, “... let’s reconnect in the fall; things will be better then.” Better was a long time coming. Meanwhile, the organization I’d created years before was also on the verge of collapse. Thankfully, life-saving donors and the love of our team saved it from certain death. And just as pandemic shadows receded, illness claimed a year of my life, keeping me from fully embracing freedom's return.

I see now how these trials have forged strength in me, and wonder if this numbness might be my spirit's growing pains. Like muscle fibers torn and rebuilt stronger. Like the necessary suffering I felt as I healed my body back to health. I haven’t considered it like that before—that my mind is also growing and stretching and getting stronger. The simple fact I’m still here is a testament to not giving up and fighting hard. I should give myself more credit.

But today I’m tired and cold. I would be more than happy to hibernate. We’ve managed to pick a weekend with the coldest temperatures we’ve seen in forty years across the country to go ice climbing in Lake City. The irony would be hilarious if it weren’t so damn cold. Yesterday, my hands froze solid as I threw my axe into frozen waterfalls, and my feet went numb as crampons jammed up and into inches-thick ice. For once, my body and mind were united in their disposition.

The Cold Earth Slept Below

The cold earth slept below;

Above the cold sky shone;

And all around,

With a chilling sound,

From caves of ice and fields of snow

The breath of night like death did flow

Beneath the sinking moon.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Earlier, I’d observed the beauty of the ice from afar. All toasty and snug in the warming shed, watching fellow climbers gear up with excitement for the challenge. Beautiful ice cauliflowers had bloomed, frosted with a covering of light snow, and in other places, chandeliers of ice hung down like the most glorious and deadly curtains. The softly falling snow, a siren rime calling us to scale a wall of glass. I’ve never seen ice like this. It shines blue, like the vanishing glaciers. A symptom of its thickness as it absorbs red and orange light and scatters the blue.

The ice appears impenetrable, like a vertical frozen lake meters thick. It’s a miracle that a millimeter point of my axe, with a flick of my wrist, can create enough purchase to hang my body weight. Here lies both metaphor for fragility and testament to life's impossible wonder— everything suspended by the thinnest filament of chance and choice.

I sit quietly next to the wood burner to thaw and think about what I just accomplished—scaling an ice wall in minus fifteen with my might and my courage for tools. I try to celebrate myself and feel pride, but it’s not forthcoming. I’ll keep trying. Instead, my overwhelming sense is gratitude to the land for showing me all sides of herself, giving me permission to feel that level of effort and cold, and still love.

Hours later, my head rests against goose down just feet from where deer have gathered in silent congregation. They materialized soundlessly as I slept. I see them just outside my cabin window and stand in awe at their perfect fat noses and giant ears, so close I could almost touch. What tenderness in this witnessing. I observe them as they observe me. Curious. Unafraid. Knowing. They embody peace, grace, elegance—qualities I both possess and desperately need to gift myself.

They symbolize peace, grace, and gentleness—all the qualities I share and all the gifts I need to give myself. In this winter’s stillness, I am once again beginning to see my own reflection. Something I haven’t seen in a long long time.