On my mother’s birthday, February 16, I took a long walk on snow shoes in the Northern woods.  The woods were beautiful and the sky blue with sun.  I never tire of it, and being here makes me long for it and to be here more.  It is like an imprint has been made inside of me and my soul from and by the woods.  It takes patience to allow the impressions to sink in and saturate your senses, brain and feelings.  It is like God is speaking directly through the woods in language that is without words.  This is so welcomed and clarifying and thought-less, except to internally proclaim the beauty and amazement and wonder.   The woods are a metaphor of profound meaning.  Showing the formal dress of snow, white on the shoulders of the pines, saying they are ready and cloaked with nature’s satin, expectant and yet still.  The blue above the shadowy lines of tree trunks etched black against the powdery white of the Birch and the Aspen.  The gentle brown of the Oak leaves, hanging on until Spring, looking individualized against the bare-leaved forest background.  This speaks.  This speaks, too, in just a vision of the wildness that has passed through.

The different prints and trails and nosings in the snow;  The Snow Shoe Hare prints on top of the cold while crust in the inch of powder; the uninterrupted line in the deep snow between deer steps; the evidence of the giant hooves of a large buck.

The woods are standing around in Winter, showing off, holding deep their electricity, going underground with their potentiality, being beautifully entwined in white, allowing each tree to show its edges in fluffy snow.  The entire Aspen forest is connected underground with wide shoots, breathing connection and surroundedness.  I am that.  I am that and it is me, I, It, Everything.