Month By Month

February

2/1/00

Dear Hesitant Water,

I write to you, and to every being that thrums throughout your body, in thanks for this wonderful sanctuary you have lent me. You are beautiful even in your solitude, in your chamber of ice.

The pure snows have begun to fall. I'm still getting used to the solitude, to the tranquility. Every now and then a voice of loneliness sighs within me, but it is silenced when I walk. Yes, I walk each day now. I circle the lake I camp beside, I turn through the trees of the forest, I meander through a field of frosted heather I found some days ago. Walking fills and empties me, a meditation of its own.

When I walk around the lake, I sense the most peculiar events take place in the secluded water. Buried in the ice, I hear scrabbles and coughs and thumps of life. The sounds are distant and primal, but they make my chapped lips smile.

Yes, the lake is eager to thaw, and the creatures underneath await the celebration of March. I feel their breath quicken, rising from the muted blue depths and stilling below its surface.

And I feel their breath merge with mine in the china dawns, before the cold slinks in with its lancing eyes—eyes that ridicule and doubt. Then the dew turns to glass once more.

February, February, the cold seems to hiss. Won't you stay asleep?

February isn't listening. The snow will end soon. I feel that, too. Soon the world will awaken at the windy touch of March. February will make sure of that.

February, the month when things would be piled in heavy drifts, and then erased.