Recently, I opened Facebook and saw a memory, a collage of photos I had posted several years ago. They showed a wintry landscape, a January wrapped in snow and veiled in frozen mist. As I scrolled slowly through the images, falling into each one, I felt something that has been all too rare, of late. I felt peace.
Winter landscapes have a way of stilling my inner turmoil. Perhaps it’s a natural affinity. I was born in Minnesota, in the winter, when snow—several feet deep, I’ve been told—covered the ground.
Perhaps it was my destiny to find peace in scenes such as these.
Then again, perhaps it has less to do with me than with the images themselves. They have a visual quiet that landscapes in other seasons do not. The subtlety of color heightens the textures, inviting me to sink deeply into the scene. I lose myself in the dove-gray billowing of treetops and the ripples on a silvery lake.
There are no strong lines, except the bare branches of nearby trees and the occasional hoarfrost crystals. The distant trees are soft.
Everything is soft, a wash of muted color, a blending of shadow and light, a watercolor world that is almost abstract.
I imagine myself in that hushed, pearlescent place.
Peace comes when I stop to focus on the beauty—to linger in a reality where beauty is enough, where beauty is everything. This peace is a possibility, a choice, but never a guarantee.
This peace is delicate, even fragile, like the eggshell-thin colors of a winter sky. A harsh sound can shatter it—and, once destroyed, it’s that much harder to rebuild.
I want to hold onto it, nurture it, return to it again and again. I want to share it with anyone who needs a measure of peace, and who, like me, can find it in the winter world.
