It was late in the year, where one could heat echoes of summer dying, and autumn moan in its morphing. Louder it grew, every day (as all trains naturally would). But such mechanisms are embraced and even coagulated with satisfied, double-skinned, bachelors and bachelorettes. Growing more pleased, the heavier their garments fall, weighing them so close to the ground, they could readily eat the bitter pollution hugging the snow. Crawling thus becomes habit, so habitual, it keeps them from mingling, and instead they had begun to stack themselves in mounds, higher and higher, in their mink fur coats, feather hats, and steam-marinated gloves, on all fours. (This was very rewarding news to the transit companies, who danced, shouted, and cried in their latest excitement.)
It was custom to turn one's nose away from others when speaking, to deny all trails of pheromones, and to ensure they kept themselves a committed pack of hungry prowlers. This in turn made them look flatter than they really were, and it began to look like these trains were transporting animal hides and clothing instead - or so I heard from a wide-eyed local, so shaken by the incident, her back had hunched so remarkably, she had to grasp the ground to catch her breath. In fact, at this time of year, people hide from nature altogether, and if I were there, I may have mistaken men for wolves's skin, and women for owl feathers.
Outside, the noises of the seasons' creaks, like the screeching and rubbing of bodies, grew so loud, it drowned out the noise of the train's bellow: I had missed its arrival. This snowfall had parked so intentionally over the tracks I was unable to pinpoint the location of whence it came. It was to no help either that neither man nor beaver had the decency to construct a station. So I began walking toward a light from a responsible city in the distance, just beyond the horizon. Bright enough and large enough to create an umbrella over the forest to my left side, protecting the trees and animals from rain, snow, melt, and frost. Fat with Spruces, behind striated Aspens that looked like the muscles of the forest; their pines haunt the condition of its wilderness by stabbing its delicate emptiness. Uniformly spread, several Red Cedar trees, that no doubt, hold the fluttering fleet of civil birds, guarding the edges of the forest.
The right side of my body had felt comfortably large, as if compensating with the vast emptiness of the ocean of snow, so much, it once yearned to be clouds so vehemently, it doubled upon itself, and mockingly grew too heavy to float away. Met by a bone-straight wall of trees, it coiled and folded in on itself even more: a white corpse, so deep, it was impetuous to assert tracks existed beneath.
If someone would have seen me walking - which many had - they would have thought I was dancing; balancing the undistributed weight of the hemispheres of my body, spinning around and around to settle everything within. But is walking not just a calculated dance with yourself; a synchronicity of skin and skin; man and snow; animal and dirt; isolation and magnetism? The crunch of the snow (supporting curling toes), resembles all too much, that of a ballerina, carefully, but dramatically, trying to lift the self off their hindering stage. It even seems the snow has joined in, orbiting their belly, and the highest rank of effort is rewarded with the blooming of this orbit. To stop moving, means to be enveloped by the frost, and I was not able to afford such weight. So I pranced like a ballerina into the distance, unaware if the forest would ever end, or even if that the city wasn't the setting sun.
