It is snowing again on the east bank of the Delaware River. When I left for a walk with Thelma to the river's edge, the sun was setting behind clouds. When we turned around to come home, I could see snowflakes falling 100 feet ahead. We walked into the swirling flurries before we got home.
This is not supposed to be a big storm -- maybe 2 to 6 inches. In years past, the television weather people would have called that amount a blizzard. They've become more nonchalant after a winter of three feet or more of snow.
The earlier storms have pruned most of the white pines in the region. There are large limbs littering much of the countryside, their yellow-white wood ripped jagged from tree trunks, their needles providing nice habitat for all the little birds wintering in these parts.
I'm reminded of the soft sound of snow falling in a pine forest. A wind piling the fallen snow in drifts whispers through the pine needles. Footsteps swish through the accumulated flakes or, when they grow deep, thwump quietly as you wade ahead.
Standing under spreading pine boughs laden with snow, you keep your neck covered or risk a cold attack of flakes sifting under your collar from their perch. Walking in the open, where the wind is stronger, flakes invade your nostrils, freezing your sinuses.
You might stop under a particularly large pine whose branches provide a protective canopy. This would be the time to snap off dead lower branches, pile them in a pyramid and, with a hand full of dried, brown needles, strike a match and start a small fire. The smoke curls up, the pine wood crackles when it heats. It is difficult to find a place where the smoke doesn't drift into your eyes.
But you settle down into the snow that you've flattened with your snowshoes and listen . . . to the hush, to the quiet.
This is the essence of tranquility.