After two consecutive snow days, I'll be returning to school tomorrow.
I've always enjoyed winter... the sharpness of the bitterly cold air paired with the equally piercing brightness of sunlight reflecting off snow, the long nights whose shadows seem to amplify the rustlings of wind and scents of woodsmoke that waft like spirits through the darkness. In recent years, I've become fond of venturing out to stroll amidst the elemental fury of a blizzard, bundling up to experience firsthand the swirling snow, the wind, the birds that seem to be having a bit of a joyride while we more advanced humans ground our airplanes and abandon our cars. Yesterday was no exception... after several hours inside, I was compelled to venture out into the empty campus to stroll, to pray, to take pictures, and to be humbled by winter. I don't always know why I go, and don't always experience anything noticeably profound, but I never regret such meanderings. Another poem by Mary Oliver, which I first read in Portland, Maine, while sitting on a bench late at night after a snowstorm, overlooking the Back Cove, nicely expresses the appeal of winter, whether tranquil or stormy, to my soul. Those words, along with the memories tied to the images below, are the beginnings of answers that will continue to develop as I return, along with the rest of central New England, to the routines disrupted by the latest manifestation of nature's powerful beauty.
"First Snow"
The snow
began here
this morning and all day
continued, its white
rhetoric everywhere
calling us back to why, how,
whence such beauty and what
the meaning; such
an oracular fever! flowing
past windows, an energy it seemed
would never ebb, never settle
less than lovely! and only now,
deep into night,
it has finally ended.
The silence
is immense,
and the heavens still hold
a million candles; nowhere
the familiar things:
stars, the moon,
the darkness we expect
and nightly turn from. Trees
glitter like castles
of ribbons, the broad fields
smolder with light, a passing
creekbed lies
heaped with shining hills;
and though the questions
that have assailed us all day
remain– not a single
answer has been found–
walking out now
into the silence and the light
under the trees,
and through the fields,
feels like one.
–From "New and Selected Poems, Volume One" by Mary Oliver
Statue of Therese of Lisieux, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester MA
Fenwick Hall, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester MA
Statue of Christ the King, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester MA
Jesuit Cemetery, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester MA
College of the Holy Cross, Worcester MA
Beautiful.
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