The beauty of winter is of an entirely different character than the beauty of spring, summer, and autumn. If the beauty of the seasons could be described in terms of music, spring, summer, and autumn would be various moods of an orchestral masterpiece. But the beauty of winter would be akin to a wistful flute solo, soaring airy just out of reach of complete comprehension. At the heart of winter is simplicity.
The beauty of winter is in the illumination of those things which, in the green and growing months, are often obscured by the glorious and gaudy, the lush and lavish, the bright and boisterous. Those little things, those hidden treasures, suddenly come to light. When there is nothing else more eye-catching to marvel at, then the colors in a curl of white bark, or the mysterious shimmer of falling snow, or the patterns of frost on a pane of glass can be appreciated for their otherworldly, exquisite simplicity.
A winter hike is a like a search for hidden treasure. Instead of tangible, quantifiable beauty, like a flower, or a green, green landscape, it is the intangible, the play of lights and shadows that make the beauty of winter. To see the beauty of winter, it is necessary oftentimes to look closer, to look deeper into the well of beauty.
When I find something in summer that catches my eye, it is often something unmistakable like a blooming flower, or a certain cluster of trees, or a gold-lined autumn path, or the way the landscape shimmers in evening. But in winter, those things that catch my eye are often the things that grow deep in the underbrush, or which nestle close at the base of a tree, or which cling to bare branches, or the way the snow outlines the hillside or the tree or the fenceline, or those moments which I cannot duplicate, like light streaming through a broken jar, or glowing through husks of flowers, or the specific way the snow fell heavy and silent for five minutes during that one snowfall, or footprints in a freshly fallen snow.
Hiking yesterday with Roy and Reagan and Anna, the trees were covered over with snow. The beauty was breathtaking. Snow fell from the branches as we walked beneath them in their silence. Snow fell from the sky as we walked beneath the peace and serenity of the clouds. We tried to catch snowflakes on our tongues. The beauty was in seeing the normally unseen, the giant dead pine with pine cones squirreled away inside of it, on a steep hillside we’ve never hiked before, or the rock overhang with crystals as thick as my little finger, or scrambling over, though, under, and between snowy branches, slipping and falling in the snow, crawling through brush that would normally be all but impassible in the summer, shaking snow from branches and sending it showering down all around.
The treasure of winter is the subtlety of its gifts.
As lovely as the snow is by day, I find the glimmering whiteness even more enchanting by the light of the moon, when the silver light filters through the bare branches of trees, casting strange and silent shadows on the flawless snow. Instead of blinding brilliance, the ground glints with a cold, unearthly sort of a light. The moonbeams seem to stream from the sky in a transparent flood, and the very air seems richer, almost as if it could be cupped in the hands and tasted.
The cold seems less significant in the moonlight. I don’t know why. But with the cloudless sky winking with stars and the snow winking with diamond-light, the moon streaming silver and the wind hushed about the trees, unmoving and silent, the cold seems reluctant to chill or burn or bother. When I lift up my face to the moonlight, with the snow glowing and reflecting and shimmering, I almost feel that my face could be washed by the light.
The spell of the first snow, as fragile as a snowflake dissolved by a single, warm breath, has faded in the warmth of the springlike November air, unseasonably mild and sweet. Ice remains on the creeks and lakes, in places where the sun doesn’t reach, holding fast to the sheltered banks, but slowing giving way to the water. Only patches of snow cling to the northern slopes of hills and beneath the branches of trees, like memories of shadows.
Song Dog Journal 