Inspired By: Winter Trees

There is nothing more blatantly cheerful than a sunny day in a park, bursting with green leaves and birdsong.  And yet it is a stark winter landscape that constantly evokes poetry in my heart. There’s something about the contrast of dark bare trees against the white landscape that speaks to me.  The trees put on their brilliant fall garments for but a moment and then they’re gone, branches bare and shivering in the wind.  It looks sad at first, as though they left the house with nothing to wear against the elements.  But then the snow comes and drapes their thin knobby shoulders in a beautiful coat of white and you realize it wasn’t sad.  With new perspective, you see them with their branches uplifted, patiently waiting to catch the falling sky.  They become graceful statues, arms outstretched as if to say, “Look at what the winter gave me.” Even the proud firs with their ever present needles, seemed pleased with the gift of snow. Sometimes in the depth of the season every inch of bark is encased in ice and it becomes a glittery coat of armor.  The trees stand silent and strong, like frozen sentinels guarding the fields til spring and my heart swells with gladness at their steadfastness, despite the elements.

As if it would be any other way, as if they are creatures who think and move and would pick up their roots and head south in the weather. But if they could choose, I like to think they would stay where they are and it is comforting. As much as I would like to take you all into the woods for a chilly walk where we could marvel together in the silence and beauty of winter trees, that is impossible.  Instead, here are a collection of images and words that inspire me almost as much as a nature stroll.

“I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape—the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show.”

—	Andrew Wyeth

“I couldn’t live where there were no trees— something vital in me would starve.”

—	L.M. Montgomery, Anne’s House of Dreams

A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.

-Hermann Hesse

"Never are voices so beautiful as on a winter's evening, when dusk almost hides the body, and they seem to issue from nothingness with a note of intimacy seldom heard by day."

- Virginia Woolf

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