The sky is a glowing ribbon under starless dark, the light so delicate I want to pluck it up from the treeline and coil it in my hand, watch it fold and sway, weave it through my knuckles. It is barely perceptible, but entirely magical, a balance mastered by celestial things—flickering far-off planets, wisps of cloud, the sun—and perhaps nothing else.
It’s winter. Not just any kind of winter, but January, a month that stings all the way through. I lean down to touch my toes, which are obscured by a cloud of breath hanging in the conical beam of the porch lantern. Bent over, I struggle to swallow the frigid air, intoxicating and abnormally thick with the smell of snow-covered cedar. 5 am is harder today than it was yesterday. My muscles are strung tightly, and my eyes are still filled with sleep. Silenced by the snow, the world can only gesture a “good morning,” which it does with a single brown bird.
I dig through my pockets for my mittens. I close up the house, feeling less connected to this moment and more to the ones that will follow, though they haven’t been born yet. Pulling the laces of the shoes I know won’t hurt my feet, testing my headlamp, I head out with few things I know into a world of things I don’t.
Is it too dark?
Too cold?
Too far?
Too muddy?
Is there anyone else out there?
Do I know where I’m going?
Doubt is so often the first face I see in the stillness of dawn, recognizable to me even and especially in the dark, when I can’t see the ground I’m walking on and survive on the tenuous faith that it will be there to meet me when I need it to. Doubt is the cramping up my side and the noise in the bushes, the shock of adrenaline from a fast-snapping twig. Doubt is the draining sensation in my fingertips on this most January of January mornings.
Over thousands of miles and hours, I have learned to love the companionship of this uncertainty on my winter walks. Often, not knowing gets in the way, until I see that it is the way. What doubt tells me—echoed by the practice of walking itself—is slow down. Pay attention. Be present in the choice to step forward. Here, in the liminal space between night and day, as the snow-covered earth groans like an old house, and the flurries and fading have a final dance, I see there is so much I don’t, can’t, never will know.
How many snowflakes can gather on my eyelashes?
Was the brown bird who greeted me the first of the birds to wake?
What will tomorrow bring? Who knows?
The ribbon of light becomes a thick, orange band, and I walk on, deliciously unsure and wildly aware, feeling the questions in my calves and lungs. Weight settles on my joints along with a now predictable ache that didn’t exist five years ago. I’m filled with reverence, a wonderful recognition of my smallness against a just-waking, soon-to-be enormous sky. The sensation, like magic, returns to my fingers, and I feel my muscles soften and slacken in agreement with the day. The sun rises, crown of her head, brilliant but just visible over rolling hills. Andrew Wyeth’s meditation on winter comes to mind.
“I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape. Something waits beneath it; the whole story doesn’t show.”
What a blessing it is to be in this story unfolding.
Prompts
What makes me feel warm?
Do I trust the ground I walk on?
Libby DeLana is an award-winning executive creative director, designer/art director by trade, who has spent her career in the ad world. Click here to get your copy of Libby’s first published book, Do Walk. You can connect with Libby on Instagram @thismorningwalk and @parkhere.
Thank you, Libby. I will surely experience my walks differently after reading your beautiful post.
Thank you also for the prompts.