The night before my birthday, it snowed just enough to create the fairy tale lace effect I’ve been waiting for all winter. I left the house at dawn and headed to Wenakeening Woods to see the splendor before it melted away. When I arrived at the Bretannia II Spiritual Center, every single briar, blade of dead grass, every tree in the marsh in front of the parking lot was intricately lined with white. The trees, dressed in their new attire, towered over bushes and caught my awareness in a whole a new way.
I walked down Marian Road and took a right into the parking lot watched over by a statue of the risen Christ, dancing.
I was the first human to imprint the new snow, but animals had left tracks too. Under the statue I found deer tracks, a lot of them, running around and around, with a strange groove, as if the creature were dragging her hooves. See below.
In the woods, rabbit, mouse and bird tracks crisscrossed the path here and there. Where the path crossed a stream, a crowd of thirsty animals had left their prints in the night. I’ve never found so many animal tracks in fresh snow and crowed to myself at even more birthday abundance.
Birds were singing, a wild plethora of chirps and melodies, and I told myself again that I would learn to recognize bird calls. Some bird songs that I heard that morning triggered a feeling of Spring in the way that scent can inspire a memory and I wondered if there were migrating birds in the snowy forest, returned from their long journey. Pine trees hung low, their branches and needles weighted with snow, creating the dark, protected, under place that always draws me, like a child looking for a place to play house. The rising sun illuminated branches of deciduous trees, shining with snow.
When I walked out of the pine grove to the edge of the marsh, buffleheads and mallards paddled away from the shore. I stood behind a tree without moving for awhile, hoping they’d return, but they remained out on the water, gliding through an exquisite scene. Blue sky hung above, blue water lay below, and snow frosted every plant and tree in between. I turned in a circle, taking it all in, and found sunlight shining through a mist of snow as it drifted from pine trees soaring above me.
Nothing was trying to be anything but itself. Trees, bushes and shrubs stood still, waiting for spring. Water flowed black through the rock lined spill way, then lay flat and still, a blue mirror for the sky. Did those sleek buffleheads know how elegant they were, necks curved just so, black and white to match the scene? From ninety million miles away, the sun’s light slanted across the sky, creating the sacred mood that comes with dawn. Snow piled up where it found itself the night before. It didn’t think, as it was falling, “I want to decorate these woods and make them as beautiful as possible for Jennifer’s birthday.” No, water followed its ancient cycle, and the resulting beauty was incidental to the plot. Everything was innocently showing up, just as it was.
I have a friend who calls herself a perfect child of the universe. I’ve tried that affirmation on a few times and haven’t found it believable. But as I stood there, watching the birds swimming in front of a tangle of lacy bushes in morning light, I wondered if she was right. Could it be, that just showing up, just doing our own thing, we all combine to create something as perfect as the view before me? There were trillions of life forms in that scene, bickering and struggling, killing and eating each other, competing and cooperating, nurturing each other, participating in the web of life in all the terrible and beautiful ways that humans interact with each other.
What if it’s the same for us? What if, just by showing up imperfectly the way I do, making mistakes, stumbling along, I’m contributing to the perfect beauty of something too big for me to understand? What if just being my contrary, comfort loving, procrastinating self is the contribution I’m supposed to make?
This soothing possibility blessed me all the way back to my car through the marvelous woods.
The snow melted quickly in the sunshine, and the world was back to its every day self before 10 o’clock, but the feeling of sacred harmony, of being washed clean by beauty, stayed with me through out the day.
Jennifer Outside 
Such lovely pictures and thoughts. Thank you for sharing the feeling.
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