Winter is a gossip - #147

And I love her for it.

Winter is a gossip. She doesn’t tell everyone her secrets, but if you time it right, she’ll tell you plenty. If she’s having a bad time, you’ll see it on her face. There will be dirt on the trails, ice in the shade, she’ll reach her claws up into the air, sheets of hoarfrost blanketing the ground like a Swarovski display. If she’s at her most righteous, she hides the secret straightaway — covering the tracks of whoever’s confided in her.

Two friends, one taking the low road, one the high, both bounding through the forest to safety and food and back again.

A badger with its steady clamber to the tree, long claws whipping the snow. She leaves an ominous track for her stout stature.

The question mark pounce of a hare, punctuated again and again.

There is a connectivity in the winter that summer lacks. The trails in summer are more scars than messages, burned into the ground with repetition. Freeways of the forest where you rejoice to see no one. When you deviate from them, it takes an awfully keen eye to notice. In winter, the footsteps tell the story. These lead to nowhere. These are one and done. These go back to the houses. These are for everyone.

There are whispers everywhere. Those who have not left their house, cars peacefully tucked in, acting as wind bluffs and caves for any cat who may have snuck outside. The drifts crawl up the doors, tickling the seams and burying the legs of the house like children in the sand. The white blanket slipping off the bed of the roof as the fire crackles within.

Those who never came home, no tracks to speak of. No footsteps to the door. Not even a trodden path gently filled in. Winter shrugs, she doesn’t have to say anything — you can see it for yourself. No one is there, and no one has been there. Except maybe a plant, alone in its pot, looking out the window at the skeletons of its friends, considering its still house, its dry soil, as the snow reaches up to block its view.

Then there are the tracks. Where they went and when, written in the legibility of their tire treads. They to school and they to work and they’ve already returned. Them quite early and them moments ago and them with a little more trouble than they may have liked. Those tracks turned around, and those tracks had to stop for something. Those tracks were having fun and those tracks were widening the road.

The tracks litter the roads and fields, the trails and the looming faces above.

Badgers and hares, lynx and coyote. Ambles and gallops and changes of plan. Hideaways revealed and favorite trees claimed. Joyful scatters with a friend, predatory panic through the trees, landings and takeoffs. The animals leave their imprint and winter lifts an eyebrow, like she knows something you don’t. They have lives, you know. You know, though. Winter might love to talk, but you’re an eavesdrop all year.

You’re still listening, with your ears, your eyes, your spine. It’s quiet at this party, this sound studio deadened by the weight of white, white water, holding the ground tight. You’re out here leaving a trail, and you’re not the only one.

A successful ski, a notable fall, a broken skin track, a best friend on their tail. These with a shovel, those with a sled. These alone and those with a pair of feet so small you might not have noticed. A jostled tree, a hidden nest, a fight won, and a fight lost – all given away.

But winter won’t tell you anything if you don’t come see her, if you don’t offer your secret in trade. If you don’t dance with her in post holes and paw prints. If you don’t let it be known you were there. She’s not a mistress. She’s a gossip.

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I wrote this essay one-handed with a baby on one hip and a dog rubbing a chewed up ping pong ball on the other.

I wrote this essay behind the baby’s head in the dark on my phone playing “10 Hours of Continuous Rain Sounds for Sleeping” while he nursed to sleep.

I wrote this essay bent over a dresser with yogurt still caked on my hands, careful not to let the heels of my hands touch the keyboard while my husband and my dog and my baby listened to Billy Joel in front of the fire.

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