She's at the Moab Slough in Utah, but I immediately think of the Lake. I miss the Lake, every day, even now in winter—so much so that it's like the weight of missing a person. I went to the Lake in winter to feel rejuvenated, to find beauty in winter through endless snow, through biting cold, through two-hour commutes and dark afternoons and dread, dread, dread. Then I took a picture of the ice sheets, glass panes, and ice cliffs and incredible stillness, and the dread fell off like a flake of snow. The Lake nourished me in all seasons, but winter was striking.
The winter here is very different. It's like a cold spring, a continual end-of-winter. I miss the Lake, but yesterday I went to the woods to feel nourished. It had been a while since I'd been in the woods, on a hike. Paris Mountain is just fifteen minutes from my house. It's no Blue Ridge, but what it lacks in scenery it makes up for in closeness. I feel at home in the woods, away from a job that gives me knots in my stomach, where I don't fit in, away from the thought that all my friends are so far away. In the woods I have the trees and, at least in winter, the moss and mushrooms and the unwavering sound of a thread-like stream that somehow twice weaves its way across the trail, miles and directions apart. The trees are like friends, constant and kind.
The woods in winter are of course a palette of grays and browns, but if you look closer/beyond you will see the color of winter. The earthy green moss on a wet, dead trunk, the electric yellow moss of a rock, the orange mushrooms sprouting from rotting logs, far off the trail where only those who see may happen upon them.
And then, like Terry Tempest Williams, "I find myself being mentored by the land once again."
