Walk in the Snow

I went for a walk with my son tonight.

It was the last full cry of winter – a heavy thick snow that started late in the afternoon on Friday.  It was the Solstice. 

I got home early enough that we had dinner as a family.  That has happened way too infrequently recently, due to work distractions.  After dinner, we were talking.  I was playing with him, but all the while, I was watching the fading day and the heavy snow.  It was one of those snows that quickly blankets and then blocks out the world as the night falls. 

So on a whim, I asked to take him for a walk.

She wasn’t sure at first, but I pointed out that I had been working such long hours this year that I had had no opportunity to play with him - build a snow man, sled, build a snow fort - this winter. 

He turned three in December.  He is now just beginning to understand from his classmates and the media what he might be missing.  And I have missed a golden opportunity to be the first to show him the wonder and joy of playing in the snow.  Dads should be there when their sons first feel the drag on their feet as they walk in a heavy snow, or the biting, aching cold of leaving your gloves off while you make one too many snowballs, or the exhilaration of riding a sled down your first hill.

As the last grey daylight fled, he and I set out.  He was fully bundled against the cold by his mother – I was less so but still protected.  We walked down the drive to the walk.  We were the first to pass on the walk.  Our foot slides in the deep snow were like the steps of a stranger in a new land.  He walked and looked and marveled at the world unfolding in front of him.  Presently, he told me that his face tickled, from the snow.  He stuck his tongue out to catch a flake.  All the while, I held his hand at his insistence. 

It was a miracle.  It was so quiet.  For those not blessed with the experience, a heavy snow brings pervasive, smothering quiet.  In the north, once the leaves fall, it becomes louder. With the air denser, the ground frozen, and the muffling effect of leaves gone, sounds travel farther and echo more.  Distant freeways or buzzing transformers you never noticed in the summer are evident if not pervasive.  Bring on a good fluffy snow, and not only the ground but even the snow filled air itself becomes a muffler.  The result can be striking and even spiritual in its effect.  The closeness and near complete silence in a place where you are unaccustomed to hearing it can simultaneously induce a feeling of oppression and liberation.  It can create an awareness of isolation and purity of thought akin to deep meditation.  It can make one’s sense of “here” become very local, very compact.

So through the dense silence we walked, hand in hand.  Uncharacteristically, he didn’t talk much.  I like to think that he was struck by the intense silence.  I want to believe that, more than the novelty of going outside with Daddy when its dark, he on some level understood or at least grasped the specialness of his walk in the snow.