Place Entry #2: Finding Life in Winter

Saturday, January 29th
11:03 AM
25°

In between my last trip to Clark Reservation and today's trip, I did some research on Glacier Lake. The lake is meromictic, which means the bottom layers don't mix with the surface layers. I discovered from an information board at the park that it is one of the few such lakes in the United States. To learn more about the properties of meromictic lakes, you can go to this link (I liked Wikipedia's layout of information):  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meromictic_lake

I decided to head down to the frozen lake. When I carved my own path through the snow to reach the stone steps that lead down to the lake, I found a discouraging sight.

The stairs leading to the lake had transformed into one slick sheet of icy snow, so I headed back to the spot I visited last week. When I reached the trail that wrapped around the cliff, I realized how different this trip was going to be from my last. Instead of facing a landscape full of virgin snow, I found paths trampled by feet and dog prints. On Monday, Syracuse experienced negative thirteen degree weather, so the rise in temperature clearly sent people outdoors. Instead of the icy silence I encountered last week, I heard kids laughing, people talking, and dogs barking. I could hear footsteps stomping and dragging through the thick snow. 

A footpath led left from the cliff trail. I decided to go follow it. I passed by bare trees poking out of the snow like dead weeds. I've heard of seasonal affective disorder, a depression that typically stems from the winter months, and as I walked, I wondered if people felt their cheeriness slip away because of the lack of color. After a season of orange and red, winter can seem cruel and long. I haven't felt depressed at all, yet I do miss seeing green in the trees and hearing the sound of wildlife communities. I heard a crow caw, and I looked up to see the black bird fly like a silhouette against the white sky. 

I heard some sharp laughter, and I turned to my left to find some cliffs draped in ice. Two kids picked up long, broken tree limbs and slapped the ice pillars. They bashed the wood against the ice, and I wanted to run over there and ask them to stop. The ice was beautiful, and I didn't want them to ruin it. The ice won. The kids couldn't even crack the formations, so they moved on, and I headed that way. 

I heard the stream before I saw it. After staring out over the frozen lake, I didn't expect to see water, gurgling and alive. 

The water bubbled over the rocks, and I stopped to simply listen. The water beneath the snow sounded like it flowed faster, as if rushing to reach the open air again. The water drifted through the open sections, as it dribbled over rocks and branches. The sound of movement, of swirling liquid, created sweet music. I tried to capture the sounds in my memory as I headed to the ice pillars.  

Behind the thick ice, the ground revealed itself. Dried leaves, still faint with color, piled on the dirt, and I remembered autumn. I walked behind the ice pillars to crouch on the ground, and it felt nice to see my boots in dirt. I looked out at the world from my winter-free patch, and again, the snow captivated me.

It temporarily cloaks the earth, and as a result, it makes us appreciate the warmer seasons when the white starts to melt away. It hides the color, so that when we see it again, we love it more. I trailed along the cliffs and bent down to observe smaller ice mounds.

They looked like miniature, frozen cities clumped together under a fortress of stone. I gazed around me for any sign of wildlife, but I didn't hear any sound beyond the human voices carrying loudly through the air. Right as I left the wall of stone, I found myself confronted with green.

I found a few crumpled spider webs dangling from branches and tucked in cracks. The moss felt bright. As I enjoyed the sight of life, I thought that people, if depressed, should find the spots I had seen: a lively creek, rushing to live under layers of snow, wispy spider webs, leaves still adorned in faded colors, and green moss spreading across the rock. It's nature's promise that life is surviving through the winter months, thriving under the quilt of snow and waiting until the right moment to reveal itself in its full glory. While winter freezes water, shakes leaves from branches, and carpets the earth, the patches remain that give hope and proof that spring will come. 

I pondered these thoughts as I walked back to my car. As if in response to my musings, two birds started singing. One bird sent forth shrill cries in sets of three. The other bird responded with a deeper, longer call. I looked through the bent branches, but I couldn't see them. They didn't stop singing, and their sounds stayed with me on the drive home.