We missed out on the ice storms this winter.
We mostly missed out on winter, for that matter. We’ve had no sub-zero temperatures and almost no snow, so the lack of ice shouldn’t really come as any sort of surprise. Normally by now we’ve endured numerous storms, and the usual pattern here has always been fairly predictable: highs below freezing but lows not yet below zero, a heavy snowfall (often measured in feet) that weighs down the evergreen bows . . . and then a cold snap so extreme that the highs may reach only single digits, and the snow hardens into three feet of solid ice. The trace water on the branches of the weeping willows freezes just as solid, if thinner, turning them into icy silvered wands in the low winter light.
At this season, the willow branches should be tools of magic.
Instead, the mercury today has risen well into the fifties, and spring is most assuredly here. Of course, the forecast alleges snow for tomorrow, but we now know better to believe it until the flakes actually fall.
There will be more snow between now and not merely spring, but summer too. That is the way of the weather at Red Willow: It is constant in its caprice, preferring unpredictable extremes to steady seasons. Now, of course, the unpredictability (and the extremes) have risen to new heights.
Such drastic changes in our winter environment have required us to envision our world here in new ways. We have seen this coming, of course; we live close enough to the land, in harmony with its natural rhythm and flow, to have noticed the changes as they occur. It’s a bit of an oddity, this way of looking at recent phenomena, but it is a privilege to be able to observe climate change in real time. For people who depend upon the patterns of the earth in the living of our daily lives, it permits us a slight advantage in predicting what comes next, and how to prepare for it.
But it also forces us to engage not only with the need for adaptation and even evolution, it requires us to engage with grief. Because it is a loss, and no mistake: loss of habitat, loss of species, yes, but also loss of the particular beauty to which we have long been accustomed.
This year, there are no magic wands in the willows, backlit by a cornflower sky.
There are, as well, precious few shadows, too, at least of the sort that usually mark the winter months. At this season, the pond is generally full: not of water, but of snow, often measured in feet and drifting gracefully across the sides of the basin to spread out across the fields like one of the seven veils — perhaps the first, modest and opaque, only revealing the sheerer colors as it slowly melts.
In our way, of course, the snow is more blanket than veil, a robe to wrap the world in while it sleeps the long sleep of winter. But heavy and modest though it may be, it is also bejeweled, spangled with beads that catch the light and send it glittering across the surface like diamonds, like the white fire of a million scattered stars.
It’s also the perfect canvas for the light to paint in shadow.
I often say that the light here at Red Willow is its own animating spirit, and an animated on, too: a being of fully formed and articulated identity, one that in turn articulates both the boundaries and the details of our world. It is a magical thing, an elemental force of ethereal mystery and pure medicine, but it is an artist, too, in its own right. The light here paints our small world in the shimmer of its own fire and and the darkening contrast of shadow, replicating other earthly spirits upon the land in fantastical ways. Depending on the time of day, the tallest aspen may become a shrub; hours later, the smallest dwarf spruce grows into a giant. The winter snows only magnify these effects, lending a solidity to ephemeral shadow that reminds us that perception is all a matter of perspective.
What do we see when we look up at the trees?
What do the birds see in the trees fro above?
What do the trees see in their own shadows?
All are right, and none; each sees part of the whole, not all of it.
It is a reminder to us that we see ourselves differently from others, and from how others perceive us: Where we choose to look, at day’s end, at the long, leggy warrior, tall of stature and lean of figure, others see us foreshortened, view distorted by vantage point.
And yet, like the trees, we are both . . . and neither.
But when the snow melts, and the ice with it, another mirror takes its place: not an opaque one this time, but a translucent glass, one that shows hidden depths even as it ebbs and flows, ripples disguising what lies beneath.
Water in the pond at winter has always been vanishingly rare; at this season, its bed is either dry or covered with snow. This year, however, the warmer temperatures have prevented freezing high above us, permitting the water to come tumbling downward to flow into its basin every few weeks. We have had more water in it this winter than we have had in all of some drought-plagued summers.
With the water comes ice, of course, but it’s rarely solid more than half the day; the mercury rises too high this year for that. More often, there is ice around the edges, but the center of its waters remain clear and liquid, a magnetic kind of mirror that pulls the willows’ reflection inward and casts it back in almost perfect form.
Almost.
But reflection is like shadow: It distorts, however slightly, that which is there, while unveiling that which is unseen above the surface. It shows hidden depths, yes, but it also shifts focus, drawing the eye to details that the light above obscures with its brilliance. It softens edges, turning rough bark into velvet and the space between branches into impossibly soft and liquid silk. It changes color, too — not the black on white of shadow on snow, but a softening of shades and shapes that hints at a timelessness of being, a spirit ancient and wise, if only by long experience.
Reflection gives us the opportunity to do as it suggests: to reflect, not only upon our world, but upon our place in it, our relationship to it. Reflection reminds us to look not, as the shadows lie, only upon the surface; reflection calls us to look deeper, to look at the mysteries within. Reflection demands more of us: seeking magic, finding medicine.
And even in this season, even in this year when none of the seasonal rules apply, occasionally, we find it.
For now, there is now snow, no ice; no shadow upon the earth, no reflection in the water.
There is only bright sunlight and trees budding out too soon, gold now shifting to the palest green and a skyscape of neon blue.
There are no magic wands of ice against the sky . . . but the wands are there all the same. They are not the clear white of icy selenite; instead, they are impossibly gold, precious metal instead of glimmering gem. But they are there, these long weeping strands cloaked in purest medicine, and they and the world behind them are magic, too: In the alchemy of climate change, they produce a new and early beauty.
~ Aji
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