Searching For Silence by E.L. Berkowitz

The air is cold and burns the inside of my nose and lungs. The snow crunches under my boots and I wiggle my toes to keep them warm. I'm walking in between hemlocks and maples, looking for the place where silence begins. I stop and listen. I hear the snow falling on my jacket. I wipe my nose.

"Sniff"

For a few seconds I have thoughts about going back. The wood stove, my bed, the warm water heated by the big gas furnace in the basement. I shake my head and return to the snow. I've been walking for 4 hours. The sun would be over my head right about now. I imagine it through the flat, gray clouds and big flakes.

I'm sitting on my pad amongst old Hemlocks. My little stove hums and I see a wisp of steam escape the lid of my cook pot. Boiling water, hot water. I fill my cup with hot water and tea and sit back against the tree.

"Sip"

The tree is as quiet as the snow. I try to slow my breathing to match the tree's.

"Sip"

Footprints in the snow. A fox maybe.

"Sip"

He was here before me. This tree was here before the fox. The snow pulled from the oceans was here before the tree.

"Sip"

I am here. Searching for silence.

I'm approaching a body of water. I smell the moisture in the air. See patterns in the ice like winter orchids built slow through freeze after thaw after freeze. They sway with the windy ripples of a beginning. This is where I come to feel. To find. This is where I hear the breathing of the trees and eternity. Where the fox comes to drink and in my mind it snows all the year. The place where silence begins, except
that back in the real world it's raining again. It's been raining for a week and despite it being January in north central PA it is 40 degrees and there has been little snow to speak of this year. I am not glad to see the rain although it may have traveled far to reach me. Perhaps melting off of a huge ice shelf in Antarctica or a Glacier from Greenland, evaporating into the atmosphere and traveling by trade winds till it reaches North America and the Jet Stream carries it to my door. I know the rocks around me have been here a long, long time and yet they are about to see a series of winters like none before. Warmer and wetter and earth changing all over the globe. A global trend of warming like the uncomfortable remembrance of having left the stove on at home...what will the future of our planet be like? What will Tioga County be like?

I adjust my pack against my shoulders. The inside of my jacket warm and sweaty like the unbearable summers to come. I'm following the creek back to the wood stove. I move fast. The Hemlocks and Maples pass by me. Snow buries their thick roots and blankets them in a quietness I am only able to imagine. I open the door in a wave of heat. I can smell the wood smoke and the people who live here. I take my jacket off. Boots sitting in a puddle of melting snow. Snow that will quickly become water. Add wood to the fire. An old Hemlock? Maybe. I speed up my breathing to match the fire's.