I haven’t seen bare ground anywhere around here since December. It’s been a long, long winter. The last storm that I recall dumping this much snow was April of 2018, and then, we knew that it was likely the last snow of the season.
But when it snowed in December, then a foot or more in early January, I knew we had a long way to go yet. We had a short February thaw, a few days above freezing, enough to melt the ice dams and the gargantuan icicles that had formed on the corner of the parsonage. And now, we’re wearily awaiting the arrival of another foot dump of snow, just when the patio furniture was beginning to emerge from the drift it’s been encased in since New Year’s week.
We attempted a trip to Dell Rapids this morning for my physical therapy appointment to fix my frozen shoulder and abandoned just short of half-way. The first round of snow had already arrived, and visibility was deteriorating. But on the way back from the van, there it was: the clean hush of new-fallen snow. One of my favorite things about first-snows back when I was a child. That, and the way the sky glowed at night, once everything was covered. Out here, the glow isn’t as evident, since we’re no longer in a town, but the silence is still there, perhaps even more intensely.
The silence was a reminder to me that even in the middle of a long, weary winter, there’s still beauty to be found. And it was a reminder to me that the long silence I’ve experienced in my writing life just might have some beauty and wonder behind it as well.
I’m currently in a season of silence, surrender, and listening. Not much else to do, really. I start something, and it circles, wanders, goes back into something I’ve written already about a dozen times. And that’s where I generally quit. It all gets sucked back into the same rut, it seems, with no new epiphanies. So, I’ve held on to that idea of silence all afternoon.
My typical antidote for writer’s block is just doing the next thing, starting somewhere random and running with it, but unfortunately that’s led to about six months of wandering, circling, treading water. Maybe I haven’t been paying enough attention, I’ve thought. Maybe I need more margin in my day. Maybe I need to read more. Yet none of this has really helped me regain momentum. So, today, I’m going to focus on what’s right in front of me: silence. And maybe that’s just what I need, because it’s what I seem to have been delivered in spades.
Today, I’ll write about the silence, I thought. So, here I am. A foot and a half deep in the white, clean hush of winter quiet, listening for what comes through, trying to be patient.
