First Snow

The great thing about the Dryden Rail Trail in the snow is the silence. I stop, and I listen. A dog barks in the distance and then is silent.  I hear a plane droning overhead gradually fading away into silence. And then there is only a faint patter of the falling snow. This solitary sound is calming in a way that nothing else has been in the past weeks.

I start to walk again and the sound of my feet compressing the snow is unique—there is no word for it. It does not crunch, or creak. It is the sound of snowballs, of snow forts, of snowmen—the sound of enchanted childhood winters.

As I walk I see only dark and white; no color on the trail. The trees and bushes bow over the trail weighted down with ridges of snow on every branch. I see the brown of a few oak leaves still clinging to a tree. Then small spots of color—a yellow Natural Area sign, an orange pole marking the Dryden Fiber cable line. Then a small miracle—a bronze fountain of leaves glows deep in the trees. It is a birch tree in the winter dress that it will wear until spring leaves come. Above me, a tree drops a snowball on my head and the spell is broken.

As I turn to walk home the silence is broken as well. I hear the traffic noise of cars and the back-up beeper of a construction vehicle. Another plane drones overhead, and I hear a chainsaw in the distance. But twice the silence returns, small perfect islands of silence that I gather inside me to sustain me through the noisy day ahead.

Go to the trail and search out the silence some morning when it snows. You will treasure these moments in the chatter of the spring, the buzz of the summer, and the crackle of the fall.