As long as I can remember, winter has always been my favorite season, especially in Wisconsin. Coasting out of the cornucopia of colors and scents of autumn, you wake up one day in the middle of November to see the grass and the leaves on the ground all coated in cold, crystallized sugar. They crunch under your feet as you walk, you watch your breath puff out in front of you, take a deep breath and give your lungs a deep clean with that crisp, fresh air. You pull your wool gloves and fur-lined coat out from the back of the closet and snuggle into them before braving the outdoors.
|
With the first snowfall it’s as though a thick felt has been laid over the city, rounding out all the edges, muffling all the sounds, laying the natural world to sleep. When you stand outside in the middle of the night and just listen, the silence is heavy and tangible, a thick quilt to wrap an empty mind up in. Life never stops moving, never ceases its sensory assault, but in the winter, nature softens it, suspends it in the frozen air, where you can feel and watch it drift down around you like so many flakes of ice.
|
When winter arrived in Milwaukee that year, I was ready for that pause. I found myself mentally exhausted by the 6 months that had just progressed - relieved after finishing school (for good, I thought), anxious over the nearing the end of my guaranteed contract at Artisan, and just generally worn out as the year drew to a close.
With the ground frozen and either glossed over with large patches of ice or slathered with thick snow drifts, development of the Fox and the Phoenix was brought to a halt until spring broke through again. As treacherous as it was, I often made my way down that slick staircase just to sit inside the cold darkness of the forts and listen to the silence around me, watch a handful of tiny candles flicker in the wind, and try to let go of everything that seemed to be happening around me. As much as I loved my apartment and all the things inside it, when I came home, there was no one waiting for me there. Here, at least, in the woods, there was no expectation of that, and in fact being in the woods gave me the impression that I was a part of silence, of the calm, soaking up the world in its raw state. Indoors, I was merely subsisting on everything I’d spent all summer escaping. |