December in Wisconsin

There is something unavoidably alluring to me about the cold. I don't know what it is. For some reason, though, I've just always been more apt to build a snow fort than a sand castle. The heat makes my spirit melt, I have the soul of a wax man, but the cold is different. I find it at once refreshing, piercing, unbearable, intense, and thrilling. I sport with the cold. With almost masochistic pleasure, I subject my toes and fingers to its sting and brave its challenge, giddy to survive its might. Cold is power! It is the power to invigorate or to destroy, the power to transform the world into something alien and uninhabitable, but something still simultaneously beautiful. I cannot help but be transfixed.

I awoke this morning to the sound of the wind beating against my bedroom wall. The weatherman had said yesterday that it could start gusting up to twenty-five miles an hour. My bed was cold, and the blankets wrapped around me felt papery thin. When the fog of sleep finally cleared from my eyes I could see three foot snowdrifts outside my window. It was the kind of morning that would make anybody want to stay in bed. Anybody, that is, except for people like me. Enlightened or deranged, I decided to go hiking.

No matter that the wind was so fierce, the snow so deep, or the temperature so cold — the thermometer in my kitchen window read ten degrees below zero, Fahrenheit — I wanted to celebrate the winter solstice by heading straight out into Wisconsin's deep December freeze. So, I quickly donned my winter gear and stepped outside into the snow. Now my adventure could begin, and I made to awe myself with winter's power and beauty for as long as I could stand it.

It's amazing how much bigger the world seems when the snow and wind impede every step between one place and another. Though I stayed outside for more than an hour, I only managed to trudge over a few of the hills and valleys that make up my family's farm. Still, I discovered some lovely things. In the wooded glen, sheltered from the wind, a defiantly unfrozen stream still flowed gently between the snowbanks. On the barren ridgetop above, the wind whipped enough snow into the air to stain the blue sky gray, and the sun struggled to illuminate the bleak, frozen world spread out beneath it. Luckily, I found that I could still use a camera while wearing gloves, and the few scenes that I captured with my numb fingers will finish this story far more effectively than my amateur prose.

Take a look at the pictures.

I'll be back with another post before Christmas.

Blackberries ripening on the stem.

The blackberry season in my part of the world is mostly over by now, but I thought I would take a moment to extol upon the delights of blackberry picking, and to a lesser extent, blackberry eating. I don't mean to state that blackberries aren't positively scrumptious when devoured, for they are, but there is something about actually picking them that satisfies more than just one's appetite. It is simply bliss to stumble upon a patch of berries somewhere in the woods and stroll lazily through the shade staining your fingers purple with handfuls (and mouthfuls) of the juicy little things. Not everything is perfect about them, of course. Now and then there is occasion to recoil at a berry that's been taken by the bugs, and the berries are guarded by thorns that I've had the misfortune to tear my skin upon more than once. On the whole, however, even these mishaps make up part of a marvelous experience. It is one of the few things that, at least for a little while, can truly make me forget about the rest of the world. Politics and microwaves and automobiles and blogging and the internet fade from my mind, and I am simply there, picking berries, and nothing else need have ever existed.

As I return home, of course, my modern concerns come rushing back to my mind, and among other things I realize what a wonderful blog entry I could make of this berry-picking. I rush back another day with a digital camera to snap a picture, and finally I endeavor to do as I am doing now, sharing this experience with my friends over the internet. It seems almost sacrilegious to transform such a simple and solitary pleasure into a fleeting bit of hi-tech socialization, but at the same time, it seems too glorious an experience to keep it all to myself.

Humanity has come a long way to get to where it is today, but sometimes I wonder, as I suppose we all do, has it come in the right direction? Are we even free to choose what direction progress takes? I don't mean to lambaste innovation, I love it. At the same time, however, I've found that picking blackberries has made me a little envious of the early humans, those who came before supermarkets, before cities, before even farms: the hunters and gatherers who represent the bulk of our species' past. They took all they needed from nature, picking their livelihood from the land just as I picked my berries from the brambles. During times of abundance, when their desserts were ready and waiting in the woods just like my berries, they undoubtedly found time, likely more than we do, for simple pleasures. There is, however, no room to romanticize their lives. I'm positive I would be unable to live as they did. For every easy summer, they had to contend with a frigid winter of scarcity, one without walls or central heat. Our earliest ancestors didn't need to worry about gas prices or traffic jams, commercial breaks or senate campaigns, but they did, to far a greater extent than we do today, face a struggle simply to survive. And yet, if we must even today be constantly worrying about something, then why must it now be about what is superficial rather than what is truly important? If we are to live, then why not really live, instead of merely extending our lifespans by hiding within our walls?

These are simply questions, to which I have no immediate answer. It is something to ponder on.