“The great benefit of slowing down is reclaiming the time and tranquility to make meaningful connections—with people, with culture, with work, with nature, with our own bodies and minds.”—Carl Honoré
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Slowing down, wasn’t that what winter was: idling and stilling of the world, rest, balancing, before restoring race in spring’s return? Did not the world need rest; did not man, too? Was it not all part of design, intent, and purpose?
She desired the still, the slowing, escape—not of hiding, but a searching whereby something is found or remembered.
Near year’s end on day of solstice, when sun makes pause and, next dawn, movement to north and life of spring, they made for the mountains; mountains that were not mountains, not even truly hills but relics of a once great highland eroded away by aeons of wind and water so that what one walked among were creation’s wrinkles, stories of life held, told, and continuing upon earth’s aged but spirited face.
In a culture and age of material consumerism, one quick to discard and make refuse of anything showing age or wear, there was a renewal found in the presence, folds, and hides of a living ancient.
Renewal, connection, these Annie sought.
The hardwoods were bare, their understory thick with cast of fallen leaves that sounded quiet in mornings beneath foot after frosts that melted into wetting dews and sounded loud in later day when dews, too, were erased. In later day, movements sounded loud in echo through the naked woods, whether trodden steps of Annie and James or the staccato searching of squirrels in broken rhythmic bounds before fast race of burrow into woods’ leaf-blanket bed.
Among the hardwoods, giving color in break of the barren hardwoods, yellow pines interspersed within the stands; trunks of scaled bark and frames that expanded and rose in shape to confinement and window to upward light.
In the holds of pine, floor of needles and not leaves, movements were quiet all the day; and in their refuge, broken shade and vivid scent stirred upon wind inspirations, they rested, reflected, quieted in still as they looked upon world around; steep of the ridges into fall and draws below; spring-source streams that shone as silver wanderings in thread of valleys and world’s wear.
In escape and rest in contemplations of restoration in ancient wild, she knew she loved it all and in soul hoped and prayed—in way of nascent and uncertain believer—that she might too be loved as she did the land and wilds when she was aged and lined with the character of life and still possessing spright and vivacity for gift.
Then, she was still in life’s summer, and in the still, contemplations, and connection in the immensity of wonder in surround of living ancient, she desired soul-spring: new life from the stillness, change; in fecundity, propagation of an essence beyond body of creating source.
She wanted it with him.
Inspired, moved, desiring winters reason and design; from stillness, they moved in make of love upon quiet needled bed under pines, living scent enriched in breath of wind around; sky change of light, hold and way; breath, like wind in rush and break, dizzy of stir, sun fallen beneath cloud—warm flood of light released.
Wind’s shudder through pines in quake above, then sky that seemed only golden until appearance of the stars: way of change never before seen, sensed, or known.
That night, in cabin in the woods, they loved again. Undressed and wrapped in only blanket, she came to him as he read by firelight emanant from stoked cast iron stove. She kissed and guided self into straddle above, guard of blanket unburdened and left to fall; light and heat of stove upon her back, embrace and warmth of hold upon front; foreheads touching, eyes meet—find, hold, and keep—then closed in draw, light and sight known through sense and feel; then need for kiss and canting of face; her hold of hands behind, fingers interlocked within his hair, drawing face stronger to hers through stove’s self-bellows thrum, inward sweep to heat-expanse; wind burst upon the cabin, ache and tremor through the walls; life-light’s release in full again then tempering of the flame; eyes and sight and world returned as they remained holding in their way.
After, Annie slept as daylight’s end: spirit golden-light unto apparent stars and dream.
In morning, they returned from the woods, away from the ancient wild. They returned to the culture, art, and community that rested ridges and world away in open, settled valley to the west.
In brown high-rise boots and white long-fall cardigan that fell to knees and covered further shirt of white, Annie wandered with James through culture’s stores and shops looking on old books—high priced and rarely read—touching their covers and opening binds, curious to tales and histories within. Touching many of the prized and guarded treasures, they returned the books back into case and, rather than reading the story of another, they returned to embraced living of the story that was theirs.
Walking, alive, embracing all; Annie cradled within a never-before sense: a new dream, alive and well and growing by the miracle of her own being.
For the first in life, or a very long while, she believed in hope for a true and eternal story—preceding even the ancient wild—and that she, of all creations, was bestowed with purpose, place, part among the mystery of eternal’s tale.
Beside James, under nadir of winter sun, Annie dreamed a spirit-spring: new life, new way, new beginning—lived and made—with the one she loved.
Never-before sense stirred in flutter, a faintness of a strange elation, knowing it was more than she that was alive.