The Wild Marsh (7 page)

You can no longer call it a branch or a stone; it is something in between, something altered, and beautiful and unique, even daring, for that alteration: between two places, two worlds. I would think that a person who had survived winter's almost inevitable depression of spirit—the violent euphorias balanced by the dark, even black, troughs—might hold such a piece of wood in his or her hand and feel a brute, physical kind of connection to the beautiful pattern of it: that once soft wood made all the tougher by the enduring, and by the filling in of erratic loss with a grit of gravel that is both of the world's making, and the branch's.

I would imagine further too that the hiker might run his or her hand over that time-polished object and in the sameness of it all not quite be able to tell anymore which is stone and which is wood.

I imagine that this walker would place the stick back down into the icy river, buoyed, if even briefly, by the stick's beauty, and walk on.

Because it's still January—the latest, last, deepest part of January—that person might be on skis rather than on foot. It might, with luck, be the first sunny day in weeks, brilliant and frigid, the sky cracked open with blue and sunlight, the world breathing in full color again rather than black-and-white. Pushing on into that bright clear winter light that has been missing for so long, the skier might marvel at his or her returned happiness—the happiness coming back upon and within as suddenly as a float, an air-filled ball, released from far beneath the surface and rising quickly, and unencumbered, finally, to the surface, the return of happiness (or—who knows—one day, perhaps, even joy) coming back like a migration of something in his or her blood, some rare and wild and elemental herd or flock of a living, traveling thing that is always in the blood, shimmering, hopeful, even yearning, but which travels in some seasons far away, only to return, always, with force; and the skier might, in the onrushing return of this mysterious migration of happiness (or even joy), marvel at how utterly strange it is that we are here, marveling not even at the
why
of our existence, but at the mere fact that we are.

An awakening. Not every day such an awakening, or in every moment—but always, hopefully, again and again, and again and again.

S
OME YEARS FEBRUARY
is the hardest month, and the longest, while other years the traveler clears it with ease, hurdles it with barely a hitch in stride; but always, the traveler respects February, and the cold, dark, somber snowy corridor of its passage, and accepts without shirking the end-of-winter weight of its accrued darkness.

Some years, a traveler in this landscape, this life, will have paid his or her northcountry dues in December or January—will already have passed through the blood's helpless Sludge-O-Rama of tired and lightless winterheart. Call it the blues, call it depression, call it seasonal affective disorder: whatever name you give it, it's a real thing, and cumulative through the years, like the effects of too many concussions, each long dark winter a biological hammer blow to the pituitary or some other important gland, irrespective of how much one loves backcountry skiing, or beautiful snowy skies at dusk, or snowshoeing, or sledding, or any of the other infinite wonders of winter. Or if each February is not like the cumulative effects of one concussion after another, then they are like a sustained diet that has for too long been lacking in a certain vitamin or mineral.

There's a part of any northern resident that wants to believe, in the early years, that being affected by this winter heaviness indicates a character flaw, that if you succumb to February or are even slowed by it, this signifies a character weakness, a flaw or soft spot in one's force of will.

But it's not that way. It—the February effect—is far larger than our puny abilities to either accept or resist. At least as much as any other, this most compact of months is a force of nature, and it packs a wallop. I've had it, the heaviness, come upon me without warning, lasting several weeks—like a rude guest—arriving when only days earlier I'd been on top of the world, and I've had it come creeping in slowly, preceded days or even weeks by sinuous and then later erratic rumblings and palpitations.

The heaviness just comes when it comes, and it comes as best as I can tell whether you're a strong person or a weak one, a happy one or a sad one. After you've lived up in this wonderful landscape long enough, it comes almost every year—sometimes in October or November or December or January, other years not until March, but most years—as best as I can tell—in February.

This happens to be a good year for me, on that count, and a good February. Who can say why? The older I get, the more I believe those downturns, those sluggish periods, have nothing to do with character, or uncontrollable external or internal circumstances, but are instead governed by some hand-from-above, or some wave-from-below, and that we are only but storm-tossed bits of twigs and leaf, or tiny insect striders, riding those huge swelling waves of mood. And yet even in a good year, and a good February, in which that lead-hearted torpor does not return, even then there are days in February when I can feel those swells trying to build far below, or when I can hear the faint rattling clack of the puppeteer working his or her strings and crossbars, which, for one reason or another, this year at any rate, are simply and mercifully unattached to the marionette of myself. Still, in February, I sense those distant swells below, and venture forth into the world cautiously, not cockily. I advance in the manner of some ground-hugging upland bird, a grouse or quail, that pauses and then freezes anytime the shadow of a hawk passes overhead.

This year, the hawk is passing on. But still, out of habit, I move carefully in February, and I do not take my happiness for granted. Neither am I convinced, despite my love for this place, that human beings are designed for or capable of dwelling here all year long, year after year.

Or perhaps I've simply got too much invested personally in the issue: the rises and plummets of my own heart. What's a little sluggishness, a little malaise—or even a lot of it—in the long run, in the arc of a life, really? Just because a tree is consumed by a forest fire, or falls over and rots, or is eaten slowly by beetles and woodpeckers, it would be silly, wouldn't it, to hypothesize that that tree didn't belong in this landscape?

Still, there's something about February, even a good February, that tries and tests and threatens to darken the soul, and brings a bit of hesitation to even the boldest of hearts.

 

February is when the ice comes, and with it, the slippery falls. January has been dry powdery snow; but February, with its warmer, damper breath, its short and lightless days, and its scudding clouds—a fantastic beauty of clouds, a full twenty-eight days of the fantastic beauty of clouds—brings the sore-throat cough and cold and dampened feet. And each day, under the warming breath of February, the top layer of snow thaws and melts, and each night, as the sun scuttles away like a coward, a traitor, and those February puddles freeze back into a glaze of ice, so that the forest is coated with a translucent crust, a shell of ice, and the roads glint, it becomes necessary to drive slower and walk slower, and to keep one's center of gravity hunkered down lower, this month, whether one hears those puppet strings above or feels those swells and surges below, or not.

There are days too in February, short dark February, and cloudy white February, when despite your knowing better, you never get out of the house. The morning begins, you putter around lazily with paperwork, you eat lunch, you work an hour or two more, you go to pick up the children at school, you come home and feed the dogs and make a phone call, and suddenly dusk has eaten the day and you tell yourself,
Tomorrow
...

 

The trees are starting to get their blood back; the sap is stirring, and the terminal and axial tips of the larch branches, previously winter brown, are glowing gold. The branches of the aspen are breathing as if pulsing blood red, fire red, and best of all, the slender limbs of the willow and alder are turning bright yellow, a living yellow that is rich enough in the sunlight, yet seeming even richer and more alive in the falling snow or, on some foggy days, in the drizzling, hissing rain. The sight of the yellow and gold branches attaching themselves to the backs of our winter-starved retinas is so welcome that while skiing around the marsh and passing near those willows, resurrected one more time, at least one more time, we come to a full stop and simply stand there, drinking in the color with our eyes, color in a landscape where for more than three months there has been almost none at all.

It's not over, not by a long shot. Most of us will have spent all our energy loving, and climbing over, the high, long, snowy wall of January. And now here it is February, with nothing left, energy-wise. It's real good, at this point, if you've got someone to love. You're falling, by this point, whether you mean to or not, and whether you even realize it or not. There is an old winter part of you that is melting to slush and falling away, for better or for worse, even as the heated breath of the earth below is tickling the cap of snow that blankets it. Sheets and dribbles of water are beginning to trickle beneath that blanket of snow and ice, and fractures and crevasses are appearing up at the surface—and in your own falling, which again may be good or may be bad, it's nice if you have someone to hold on to.

And you try to enjoy it for what it is,
February,
whether it is a joyful one or a darkened one, but make no mistake—be honest—what you're really holding on for is March, and the return of the geese, and dirt and mud, and all the other months beyond.

February, as much or more than any other, is a time for quiet, steady work, work with very low and attainable goals, or, best of all, work with no goals, work that is simply work.

The light is softer and prettier, when it appears—which is still rare and infrequent—and, as with the blushing limbs of the softwoods, seems to somehow be alive, which is an odd concept indeed for a thing as abstract as light. And yet it seems as alive as an animal, so strong and beautiful a presence is it; and you know that any day, or perhaps even any hour, any minute, a bird is going to begin singing again, though still you don't dare to hope or dream yet after so long a trudge through the snows and lightlessness of the other months. Still you lay low, if you are wise, or experienced, and you wait patiently, waiting for February to move past and behind you, rather than your endeavoring to push on, floundering, through it.

And beyond the return of those first slender fibers of color, and the first few patches of living sunlight, there is something even more wonderful.

There is the first hint, once again, of warmth: faint brushings of warmth, light as the touch of a handkerchief against the back of one's neck, or against an upturned face—faint, but enough, at first, after such an absence; for now, enough.

Appearing all throughout the woods too are the shapes and textures of old buried things, emerging as if from beneath shrouds—some ragged, as they were before they had the blankets pulled over them, though others sleek in their emergence, with a thinning glaze shining over most of the world, as the days warm the snow to the melting point only to have the nights freeze it back again, until that world's shell is more transparent than glass and seems to magnify the objects that are beginning to reappear beneath that lens of thinning, clearing ice.

There is something now that looks sharply different about the woods each day, and if it is one of those Februarys when you are feeling good, you can understand and see, in your joy of the approaching spring (even as you milk, with pleasure, the last of winter's goodness and silence and beauty), how the world is being made ready quickly for the return of the birds and all the other sleeping things. And if it is one of those Februarys when you are feeling low, you marvel at the brute tenacity and determination of life and are humbled by the onrushing force of it, even as you, supposedly a superior being, possess no such force and perhaps, even in February, feel defeated—though by what you cannot say.

 

More and more sun drifts into the valley, and the snow melts and trickles in the daytime, then contracts again beneath night's bright stars, scrunches back up: but each next day there is a little less of it.

On a walk, the old blind dog, Homer, passing through a sunlit opening in the woods, one which possesses that clear hard glaze of the previous night's freeze, is delighted to be capering across the taut frozen surface of that ice rather than punching through the snow as she usually does: scampering now as if in once more the freedom of her youth rather than her sixteenth winter. Tail wagging. One more winter behind, or almost behind. Can she see, in her near blindness, the brilliance beneath and above and all around her? Or is she aware only of the spaciousness of it—some vast and delightful emptiness everywhere, near the final end of winter's hard story, and with a little pause in the world now, as the world, this northern world, begins to prepare to receive all its characters, and the jumble and speed and complexity of life, once more?

 

Even though the temperatures are warmer, you feel colder, sometimes—as if your resistance has been worn down. Or perhaps it is because of all the moisture that is being released by the melting snowfields, or the return of the winds and the stirring breezes; but in the mornings and again in the evenings, you're chilled, and a fire still feels good in the wood stove, even though the cold bright sun is shining and even though the water is dripping from the eaves.

Bald eagles soar in pairs high over the open bowl of the marsh, almost out of sight. It's cozy to visualize the column of shimmering updraft, the pillar of it, rising from the reflected perfect circle of the snowy marsh below, the dark woods all around absorbing the sunlight but the snowy marsh reflecting the heat straight back up into the blue sky and the eagles riding, as if on waves, the pulses of that one pillar of marsh updraft, spinning and soaring nearly a mile above the marsh, tracing the perimeters of it with their wingtips.