A Snowy Silence

I can think of no greater peace in the world than that of a snow-filled landscape. There is something about snow that muffles all sound, that hushes even the most raucous of nature’s creations. As a young man I would wander in the fields behind my father’s house to steep myself in snowy silence. Like a sunbather soaking up the midday rays, I would lie on my back in a drift of snow and let the silence penetrate my skin. I would listen for the wind in the naked branches of the forest, for mice under the snowdrifts, for the flap of a raven’s wings. And through it all there was no one. Just me. We lived on the top of a large hill in upstate New York. To the west our closest neighbours lived half a football field away; to the east the closest lived a whole football field away. Behind the house lay a quilted network of fields and woods; a stream crazy-stitched itself across it in spring. And I could wander undisturbed, no brothers, no father, no troubles.

I think that Robert Frost must have felt the same. His poem “Stopping by a Woods on a Snowy Evening” captures the sense of awe that a snow-filled woods inspires in a weary traveler caught out on a cold December day:

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.