The Promise of Silence

The promise of silence is nearly as lifegiving as the actual experience of silence.  But not quite.  This morning as I prepared to go to the woods, I could have sung for joy.  It's been such a long time, and though it's not my favorite season, there is nothing like the forest under the snow of winter.  The silence is profound.  The solitude is usually perfectly unbroken.  Today, winter made its second cameo appearance in the season that bears its name.  I've missed the true winter, and today was a gift.  On Tuesday, we'll return to the high 40s. 

Here at last, in the second photo, are the "snow and jaggers" for which this melancholy little piece of Internet real estate is named.  This is State Game Lands #203--up in the North Hills; it's the only SGL in Allegheny County.  Of course, it's still deer hunting season, but only flintlock.  I figure if some hunter would 'accidentally' shoot an orange-bedecked hiker with musket and ball, then Providence is just out to get that poor hiker, and if it's not some antique-firearm lover, it will be a slow-moving postal delivery truck with its four way flashers blinking, or a bizarre grease fire in his own damn kitchen.  In other words, it would be almost unheard of to catch a stray musket ball.  Musket shooting is far less haphazard than other rifles.  Besides, it's not like up in the North Country--where angry fat men stay in cabins and hunt drunk.  

SGL 203 is nothing to get excited about.  It's a patch of woods being encroached upon by suburban development and the soulless subdivisions of the damned.  But it did the trick.  When there's snow, you don't need a trail; you can just follow your own footprints back out.  So I bushwhacked into the woods far enough that there were no road noises to be heard.  I made it to the summit of some unnamed hill--or a hill whose name is long since forgotten, and there I found a good spot to sit on a fallen tree.  As always, I sat in perfect stillness, perfect silence...this time for ten minutes.  Ideally, a good contemplative spell will last a minimum of twenty minutes.  I think it takes the body and spirit at least that long to get the point: "Hey guys!  No talking.  No moving.  No intentional thinking.  We're shutting down.  Pass it on!"  But I was so starved for the purity of the winter woods that the trancelike state came upon me within the second minute, and it didn't dissipate until I began to feel the snow beneath me melting into wet spots against my skin.  

I know the trancelike state very well.  It's one of the greatest joys of my living, and nowhere is it easier to achieve than in the winter woods.  In scientific language, it's just endorphins.  In religious language, it's a Zen-like place past emotion and care.  It's my drug.  It's my substance of choice.  It's the thing that keeps me coming back to the woods for more.  I tried to tell some Scouts about this at a recent pack meeting that I was invited to attend, but I don't think anyone quite got it...