Winter is a quiet time, the season of silence and muffled sound. But storm-driven winds can also blow, lash out at eaves and howl in the tops of trees. At other times, snow falls more tranquilly, making no sound as it hits the ground, collecting like great tufts of absorbent cotton on branch and bough. After each weather event, the Earth’s northern land masses resume their patient wait for life to stir once again beneath them.

It is a contemplative time, when less noise infiltrates my thoughts and less activity distracts me from them. Like the tree branches just outside my window, patiently bearing up under their weight of newly fallen snow, I bask in the silence brought on by this slowing down of life, this more languid pace. The white landscape provides me with a calming focal point, allowing me to clear my mental notepad to make room for new ideas, new dreams. My own inner pace is set to the workings of winter, to the slow but deliberate and noiseless envelopment of all that surrounds me, setting the stage within me for the impending reawakening, not only of nature, but of my own senses as well.

At this moment, there is nothing out there that is not immaculate, save for a few tree trunks and branches that the snow wasn’t able to adhere to on its journey down from an equally white sky. Such an absence of color has a cleansing effect. It is a momentary obliteration of all that is unsightly in the landscape this time of year, and one that reaches deeply inside me as I stare out upon this perfect, unbroken purity. All is still, barely moving, save for the occasional clump that falls from the trees. No words exist that could adequately give substance to this scene, none but the language of the mind as it delivers these images to my soul where the soil is fertile and ready to receive the seeds that will hopefully give rise to new possibilities. And if a higher power chooses to share its secrets with me, there is no better time than now while my mental slate is as bare and pristine as the landscape.

A walk outdoors shows the bottom sides of branches in sharp relief against the snow’s pearliness, and I am once again embraced in an overwhelming silence. I look upon all of this in the knowledge of how transitory it all is, and know that, within a few short hours, the scene will change again. Somewhere in the distance, a tree branch snaps under its load, and closer by, icy flakes hit dead oak leaves still clinging to their twigs. Someone glides along the road on skis, and a glance upward reveals drooping pine trees swaying slowly in the wind, keeping time to a song only they hear.

Winter’s song, the soft sighing of a season that allows me to hear my inner voice more loudly now than at any other time of year, that reunites me with old thoughts, old memories, old hopes that I pushed to the back of my mind during lusher, greener times, reaches me now as I see the day come to an end in this world gone completely white. No bird sings this day, no human sound interferes with this perfect calm, this healing quiescence possible only on a snowy winter’s day in the woods.

— Rachel Lovejoy, a freelance writer living in Lyman, who enjoys exploring the woods of southern Maine, can be reached via email at rachell1950@yahoo.com.