One of my favorite pictures from my childhood is a shot of me standing in the snow at our campsite at Crater Lake.  It was just my mom and I in those years, and we frequently went on road trips, camping in parks, or sometimes simply sleeping in the car on the side of whatever bumpy back road on which we were traveling.  In the picture, I’m wearing a sensible snow outfit of 70’s blue jeans, sandals and a blue tee-shirt sporting daisies across the front.  My hair is in two braids and my teeth present themselves to the camera in various degrees of loss and growth.  Next to me, stuck upright in the snow are two Barbies, dressed about a sensibly for the snow as I, a Charlie’s Angeles Farah Faucet doll and five of my Breyer plastic horses – molded into horsy action poses.  It’s not so much the picture I love as the feeling it represents: simple happiness due to simple snow.

 It was actually sometime in the spring, the patchy snow only left in shady spots and where there had been big drifts.  But those were the places that I drifted to immediately.  For a little girl growing up in the wine country of California, even the little patches of snow provided a dream playground.  I’m not even sure I bothered to look at the lake on that trip.  All I remember is the feeling of excitement as I galloped the plastics horses through the snow, kicking up little soggy wisps as they carried blonde riders with large breasts and impossibly skinny waits.  I imagined a pure white landscape with the horses nobly running through in slow motion, much like Budweiser commercials I had seen before Mom disposed of our TV.  Later, Barbie and friends threw tiny snowballs at each other, one happily smiling with her monotooth as I tried to catapult her arm forward; another giving a monotooth smile in return as she received in the face the snowball that I finally just threw myself.

Snow still delights me.  It has the power to shoot adrenaline through my body, turn me into a four-year-old, or fill me with the deepest sense of contentment.   Since I live at sea level, a snow-covered scene is rare.  But just a twenty-minute jaunt up toward Hurricane Ridge in the winter transports one into a dreamy landscape, frosted white and soft around the edges.  Last week I walked my dogs on the old Hurricane Ridge road, freshly blanketed with about six inches of snow.

Had anyone been there, aside of the dogs, they would have witnessed a girl throwing powdery handfuls of snow into the air, smiling to the sky as the crystals floated lightly to her face.  I was giggling, gleefully kicking snow in front of me as I walked, ambushing my dogs with armloads of snow as they ran past, and simply jumping around in circles in the same spot at the sheer joy of being in fresh snow.  I have been known to plow into tree branches while mesmerized by the sight of snow spraying up from my toes as I walked.  When the sun is out, I get down on my hands and knees, my nose centimeters away from the ground, and marvel at the intricate crystal formations sparkling with color.  I think of a miniature city of iridescent buildings, artfully crafted with a variety of angles and delicate ornamentation.

Today I hiked up to Mt. Zion – a short trail abundantly lined with wild rhododendrons leading to a spectacular view of the Straight, Hood Canal, Puget Sound and the Cascades.  The entire hike was in several inches of snow and I couldn’t have been happier.  The greens of the cedars, the rhodies, the salal and mosses mixed with the browns of trunks and the white of the snow to create a striking, yet simple color combination.   A few Oregon grape plants, still fall-fire-red, peaked up through the snow.  The salal, taller than Oregon grape, rose up serenely, surveying the forest floor.  Salal leaves have such a pleasing round shape; they remind me, for somewhat inexplicable reasons, of Danny Devito.

Each plant carries or sheds the show in its own way.  The cedars hold very little on their flat foliage, making them appear bushy and furry next to the rocket-like firs cradling white packages in many arms.  The lanky rhododendrons were virtually naked, save the snow that sat peaked on top of clusters of rhododendron leaves like little nightcaps.  Asleep for the winter.  Yet when I looked closely at one set of leaves, I noticed a rather well developed flower bud.  What was it thinking?

“What are you thinking?” I said aloud to the rhody.  But what do I know; I’m just a human.  All I have to do for the next season is take off my coat and turn down the heater.  The rhododendrons have much more experience carefully preparing for the upcoming seasons than I.

I left the rhododendrons to their patient processes and skipped down the trail, the first few lines of James Brown’s “I Got You (I Feel Good)” looping through my head.   I did feel good; I felt great.  But then I mused about these very human and modern things we bring with us into the wilderness:  James Brown, Danny Devito, synthetic clothes, my blue and purple backpack.  At least I left Barbie at home this time.

But I wondered if I, and this trail, even belonged here at all.  It would be naive to believe that I am part of the wilderness.  Like it or not, I carry with me a history of humanity that has spent nearly its entire existence trying to package, domesticate and level the natural world.  To these woods I am just foreign visitor kindly accepted.  This snow and these plants do not need me to appreciate them, to pitifully attempt to recreate their grace through my words.  They just exist.  And that is the most beautiful part of all.

The smell of snow, and of something less tangible, carried beyond my nostrils to fill my whole body as I hiked on.  Around me, the ebb and flow of the snowy forest carried on in one of its most beautiful displays: snow falling off the trees as the sun warmed and a light breeze blew.  Occasionally, a large snowball would dive out of the branches with a whump!  But mostly the snow fell as a delicate mist of tiny, shimmering rainbows dancing through beams of sunlight.  It reminded me of Tinkerbell’s fairy dust, glittering and winking pinks, blues and whites.  Several times I stood in the light shower, my face upturned and eyes closed to let snowflakes settle on my eyelashes.  It could almost make me fly.  I would fly up to the clouds and float back down as a lacey snowflake, land on a green bough, sprinkle my way to the earth, then wait patiently to melt and do it all over again.  The tree braches, when parted from their snow, always waved a gentle goodbye, as if this is the way of things – a serene acceptance of the beautiful movements of nature.

Copyright @ 2001 Erika Thorsen