Editor’s note: Walt Amses is an educator and writer from North Calais. This piece was first published in the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus in 2011. This year, the winter solstice is at 6:11 a.m. on Dec. 21.
The wind-whipped sleet rattles against the drying leaves along the trail, making it colder than the air temperature and louder than a meditative jaunt was supposed to be. The howling gale almost supports me as I lean into the hill, wondering whether a solstice morning hike was such a great idea after all.
Predictably, there is ice on some of the rocks as I pick up elevation, except I failed to predict it. Not having done much hiking the previous summer has contributed to my mind being as out-of-shape for this sort of venture as my body. Pumping irony. With the ground generally dry, I didn’t anticipate it, an omission that has an increasing number of implications – none of them very calming.
The landscape is classic. The exuberance of Vermont autumn long since replaced by foreboding browns and grays, devouring what little light remains. I knew the first substantial snow cover of the year would temper the bleakness but right now would certainly not be the optimum time.
My inner pagan tries in some way to celebrate each December’s transition from fall to winter as far away from malls, multitudes and masses as I can get. And as I age, my instincts trend toward solitude in the face of what seems an increasing expectation that we participate in what has become an annual soul-deadening frenzy.
My inner pagan tries in some way to celebrate each December’s transition from fall to winter as far away from malls, multitudes and masses as I can get. And as I age, my instincts trend toward solitude in the face of what seems an increasing expectation that we participate in what has become an annual soul-deadening frenzy.
Hiking has always been an outlet that provided a sense of accomplishment and made me feel middle-aged-capable. As I listen to my own bizarre rationalization of having come too far to turn back, I feel hardly capable, more doomed by my own stupidity.
I forge ahead, imagining the treachery of coming back down … one slip, and my feet are silhouetted against the gray sky as the back of my head bounces off the granite mountainside. I wake up way later, in the dark, too dazed and frozen to prevent varmints from gnawing my extremities but unfortunately, just alert enough to perceive it clearly.
I trudge on, squinting to avoid the pellets stinging my eyes and recalling unrelated events that now seem suddenly, strangely like missed omens. A couple of years ago, hiking in the northern Rockies on July Fourth weekend, we gleefully encountered three feet of snow on the trail. “Why not,” we figured. An hour later we learned precisely why not as clouds, wind and impenetrable fog preceded a mix of snow and rain that soaked us to the bone in a few short minutes.
Snowshoeing closer to home a couple Januarys ago, I experienced the fragility of life in the woods. Cresting a small rise there were tiny footprints from under a protective thorn bush that were destined for a meadow until stopping abruptly, encircled by the perfect imprint of an owl’s wing in the fresh snow.
Over the last harrowing hundred yards I reflect on those memories, wondering if either was a harbinger of this morning that I’d simply been too preoccupied to notice. As I neared the summit with my head still down, mired in worry over the likelihood of my demise, for a moment, I missed the obvious: The clouds had parted, revealing a startlingly blue sky; the sleet had ebbed and the sun was radiating through my wet clothes.
A bulky wool sweater in my pack allows me to hang out at the top in spite of the wind, leaning against a boulder, indulging in the moment, struck by the astounding brightness. As I remember what day it is, the ancient past and the distant future come flooding into the present for a split second and I realize that, as it has for millennia, tonight will be the longest night of the year.
