Bone-Chilling Forest

We are walking through deep snow in a forest of scattered spruce and Douglas fir, you and I.

With each step, the snow threatens to cascade over the tops of our boots.

My cheeks tingle.

You haven’t felt your toes for an hour.

Boughs of the trees, weighed down to the point of almost touching the ground will dump snow down our backs with the slightest whisper.

Wind gusts twist the treetops.

We know all of this, yet we keep trudging, choosing and rechoosing our path, eyes and ears sharp for what lies ahead.

This is the bone-chilling cold before Christmas.

As we pass each tree of the forbidding, frigid forest, we step closer to the clearing and warmer temperatures.

We have already trudged past so many trees.

We brought the cows closer to home.

Our horses faced the brutal north wind on that ride.

You kept the cows bunched.

I pointed them home.

We both felt our nose hairs freeze.

We both wondered if this is the romance of ranching.

You feed hay that will keep the livestock warm,

I watch the too-small haystack shrink, knowing I can’t avoid feeding for another two weeks.

The cows and sheep are too hungry right now.

I clear the driveway of drifts, only to have it blow in again the next day.

You bury the pickup in the snowdrift that piled in the driveway gate.

I come home in the dark wearing light town clothes, knowing my choice is to shovel either before I get stuck or after.

You use highly motivated backward planning at its finest to convince me to shovel before I get stuck.

When a desperate young man stumbles over the hill to ask for help, you switch from feeding the livestock to cruising up the county road in the tractor to pull out a freezing family who misjudged where the edge of the road ended and the snowdrift began.

I cruise on the tractor back down the county road without the headlights that quit 50 years ago, using the fenceposts on both sides of the road as guides.

When the fenceposts disappear into the pitch black, I am grateful for the truck tailgating behind the tractor as a signal to pass. I hug the middle of the road so his headlights illuminate my path while he can’t pass me.

You know that water troughs, equipment and furnaces quit when the temperature falls below 0.

I know cold can kill both livestock and people who don’t plan.

Cold is not a malicious enemy.

Yet it is formidable.

You know defense requires vigilance and foresight.

I focus my mind on this moment and the next, hoping to mitigate most problems before they grow too large, too dangerous.

The warm woodstove and wool blankets call to us, but the cows and sheep call louder.

They hunch their bodies, tails to the wind.

They hear a diesel engine and trail away from the protection of the barn for breakfast.

So we keep trudging past the snow-laden trees in the forest, catching glimpses of a clearing ahead.

If only we can endure for five days, 120 hours, 7200 minutes, we will feel our toes warm. We will be tempted to shed one coat.

We anticipate.

We know it’s coming.

We will check the thermometer and find a 0, maybe even a 1.

Positive temperatures never feel so warm as they do soon after -27.

We keep pushing through the bone-piercing cold.

You glimpse the clearing ahead.

I feel hope.

You take my hand as we trudge, single step by single step.

I feel joy through my fingers.

You smile in the clearing sunshine.

I see peace.

Love grows from our gratitude.