The sky holds the promise of snow today ~
A pink light at dawn, leading to a thickening of cloud-covers overhead. The growing sunshine, which graces us in January, and began this day, ebbs into a deepening. A rising wind will soon call forth the water gathered in these clouds. The very ones that suggest a great snow fall is a-coming.

This possibility, this promise excites me. When the snow falls, I sense a presence, one I can glimpse with the contrast in light and dark, like when the trees hold a background tableau, or the frosty tree tips glow, or the snow lands, covering large swaths of land, transforming what was yesterday, into something new.

Like emissaries, the snow arrives with import, individual expression, and in various languages. Some snows blow sideways, on a wind blown free from the ocean, miles away. Others spiral in intricate patterns in response to eclectic celestial music. And Always the lightness of the snow contrasts the darkness of the treetrunks and branches. All these snowfalls contain a palpable conversation, offered in their unique language. Saying, convening meanings and feelings on their path to landing. Ones that I hope to receive.

I love to watch how the water, air, trees and sun will interact in this felt presence. How they create a conversation like no other, like one between friends. I feel riveted to listening to and witnessing this music and dance, as if all this might teach me something about this thing called being alive, this moment of life,
about me, about you.

I seek to touch this consciousness.

As spirals of white descend in deepening spirals, tree roots, trunks and limbs reach upward in an ascending patterns unique to themselves ~
A continuous flowing stream of conversation and movement.
Myriad threads of moonlight and earthlight interweave in descending and ascending patterns
building a deepening sense of wonder and miracles,
Building a dance of opposites,
creating something new, something ne'er seen before.

The unnameable mixing with and into solid form

I started this post with the desire to find words to "capture" the essences of snow. I hoped I would find a name to give to the snow, that I could be as literate as the Inuit who knew the names of their relations that came in the winter falls.

By the end of this post,
I have surrendered to, come to acceptance of not knowing.
I have found my emptying out of my names and categories, of words and structure, of definable. I understand, in doing so, I have come closer to conveying the sense of the unknowable. I find in this surrender a greater felt sense of the beauty and vastness within the ephemeral, and eternal.

Indeed, within me exists a desire to Understand. To Define, to Describe.
And within me there is also the wise knowing to release all those efforts and witness with compassion to the unfolding. The wise knowing mixes with the mind, just as the earthlights and moonlights mix on the breath of snow, a knowing and unknowing, a spiraling dance

Lovely and ever-changing.

Sun will break through the clouds after this snow,
illuminating with impossible brightness.

"We lose when we try to control;
we gain divinity when we surrender." Laurie Herron

Thoughts of writing on this blog have fallen down and in between the roots of this soulful winter in which so much internal metamorphosis took priority.  Starting from the transformative solstice (soulstice) to this fast paced month of February, deep layers of thought, emotion, and consciousness have risen from within our beings to be examined, refined and winnowed.

Until now, I have been unable to articulate this process and its relation to the tree beings. Here, I hope to return to a more regular sharing of the messages from the woods.

Today, on the walk to the sunny spot in the forest, these words came to me: "as the snow softly melts, seeping into deep the layers of the earth below, slowly and almost imperceptibly it begins to reveal the ground on which we stand. As it melts, so too will clarity slowly, inevitably be revealed for all that perplexes, confounds and restricts your joy."

Then I wondered, in that moment, what in me needs to melt before this gentle clarity can bless me, too. Before it can come, and come it will in its perfect time,  what receptivity to warmth, light and hope do I require?

In the forest, snow melts gently into the cover of last year's fallen leaves.  The gentle melting of ice allows for the perfect seasoning of this fabric of botany that lives beneath the surface of leaf mould. Have you ever pushed back the top layer of leaves in a forest and seen the intricate and delicate weave of sinuous roots? Roots quickly extends small shoots into this environment gaining purchase into this realm of moisture and nutrients.  It appears that the growing tendrils savor the nourishment and life present in this layer.

This layer welcomes the frozen water that has fallen this winter in its crystalline wonder.   As in any Emoto experiment, the snow captured the essence of the energy through which it froze. (http://www.masaru-emoto.net/english/water-crystal.html)   As the crystals melt, the water releases the gifts of this essence to the trees.

As I contemplate this process, I begin to see that as I seek clarity in this early Spring light, expecting to get all the information before it is ready to be released/revealed is futile.  The release has its own timing.  The forest floor patiently awaits the full release of this information, whether it be in snow melt, spring rains, or morning dew.  Slowly the truth will be revealed. Then, too, we will feel clear; like a spring morning when hope is restored and the unfathomable seems conceivable.