Here and Now

Story by Steve Silk

As a designer and aficionado of gardens, I’ve learned a couple of things about snow. One, it can cover up a lot of mistakes. And two, it has a way of stripping things down to their essence. Snow reveals a garden’s “bones,” the enduring shapes and form that give a garden character. Seeing the skeletal forms of trees and shrubs, rocks and boulders, arbors and trellises, seeing them etched against a featureless snowy white screen tells me all I need to know about the harmony — or the lack of it – in any landscape design.

In the same way, snow helps to expose the harmony – or sorry to say, the lack of it — in my own inner landscape. Just as snow so often does in the garden, it covers and it reveals what is in my soul. It helps hide the little distractions – the could-haves, would-haves, and should-haves – and favors instead the beauty of structure, the enduring elements that constitute my inner big picture.

Let’s say I’m puzzling over the solution to some design challenge. In my eagerness to solve the problem, I think really hard about it. So hard, I get in my own way. Then something else grabs my attention for a moment, and when I reboot the creative process, bingo, a solution is waiting. Have you ever gone to bed pondering some question, only to wake with an answer? It’s like that. Just as cutting brush opens up uncluttered vistas, ridding the mind of distracting bits and pieces frees the subconscious to explore on a newly cleared path. Forget the trees, see the forest. That’s what being out in the snow does. It opens up the path by helping me to forget, for a while, what’s wrong. And by helping me to remember, for a while, what’s right.

Not far from my house, a raggedy trail rambles through a dense woods of oak, maple, spruce, hemlock and beech. When snow flies, and the trees are bowed under a white cloak and the snow-smoothed ground looks smooth as a feathery quilt, the trail is at its most compelling. That’s when and where I like to remember what’s right, so I click into a pair of cross-country skis, and shove off, gliding under towering hemlocks.

I’ve discovered a large part of what’s right is communing with nature. Out here in the real, real world, I revel in the snow-covered scenery, the subtle grays of tree trunks, the greens of the Christmas ferns. I hear the local barred owl, who always hoots around three in the afternoon.

Once I saw some Tibetan monks spend days using colored sand to make – grain by grain – an intricate mandala. When it was done, they picked up brooms to sweep their efforts away in a dramatic demonstration of the transitory nature of all things. As they swept, one of the monks rang a small bell, exhorting the others to be mindful, to “be here now.” That hooting owl is to me as the ringing bell was to the monks, a psychic alarm clock alerting me to the beauty of this very moment.

Foresight, a British government think tank, recently queried some 400 scientists as part of an effort to develop a new national health initiative devoted to improving the lives of British citizens by encouraging them to do five things a day to promote their physical and mental well-being. The campaign, modeled after the 5-a-day nutritional program in this country, is to encourage folks to do five simple things to help make their daily lives happier and more meaningful. Among their prescriptions: “Be active” — they suggest a daily stroll, and “Be curious,” by which they mean we should “note the beauty of everyday moments … and reflect on them.” In other words, be here now.

Skiing through a snowy landscape, it’s easy to be here now. In short order, I coast into what I call the enchanted forest, a densely wooded copse darkened by a canopy of spruce. The closely spaced trees stand like pillars supporting the sky in nature’s version of a perpetually twilit cathedral. At my feet, the snow tells a story, one that’s only a few hours old. Yet it is still here before me, fresh as if it just happened. Looking down I can see, literally, into the past. Chickadee tracks show me evidence of the little bird’s unseen passage, a moment imprinted, for a time, in the snow. It’s as if the bird made a mandala of its own. Appreciating the simple beauty of this particular everyday moment -- the chickadee tracks etched in snow — makes me seem a part of some larger, more cosmic harmony. It feels right. In that moment of communion, the veil of consciousness that separates me from the world outside slips away. It’s as if a shadow has lifted. The past fades, the future fades, and all that’s left is a great, onrushing now. Suddenly, I feel at peace, and at one with all.

No, I am not having a psychotic episode. Nor is it a Prozac moment. It’s what psychologists call flow, an apt description of a state of mind outside of time, outside of thought. But I recognize it as something else, something a more churchy person might think of as spiritual. Yep, rambling through the woods has become, for me, a form of meditation. I’m not the first to get that idea. There’s a long tradition of recognizing the repetitive performance of a simple act as a contemplative pursuit. Zen monks spoke of a “chop wood, carry water” spiritual path, which recognized that one can experience transcendence in the mindful pursuit of the most simple, mundane task. Like walking. Or cross-country skiing.

I glide down a steep hillside, beneath a skeletal old hemlock, an ancient lord of the forest now dead and decaying. It, too, heralds the passage of time, offering mute testimony to our own ephemeral presence on Earth. From there, the trail crosses a narrow valley and climbs toward a rocky, hemlock-tufted knob. I dig my poles into the snow for extra traction, and spread my ski tips apart to herringbone up the rise. By now, my body is warm, my breathing more rapid, and my mind is sharply focused, attuned to the task at hand and nothing else. Not having to multitask is therapeutic.

Cresting the hill, I see scores of cleft-hoofed tracks, mounds of droppings, and an occasional tuft of fur. It’s a deer gathering spot where, judging by the scattered patches of packed snow, a small herd convenes nightly to bed down. It feels as if I’ve stumbled on a secret, something like the elephant’s graveyard in the old Tarzan movies. Deer have been an anathema to me, for the way they have occasionally ravaged my gardens. Seeing their pathetic retreat makes me a little ashamed of my past enmity. Being in the moment, free of my gardener’s bias, allows me to feel sympathetic to their plight, which in winter must be desperate.

From the deer beds, my trail winds round a low ridge, circling off toward the north. It slopes off in a long gradual descent, and as I ski through the trees, I‘m attuned to every nuance of motion, the better to regain my balance when a stray branch catches my ski or I scrape across a rock. Any distractions or digression from the immediate moment, and down I go. I found that out the hard way. So I zip along, happily tethered to the present. After cresting the ridge, I drop off a rocky shelf, pick my way though a few boulders, and ski to the foot of a towering beech. I always stop to admire this fine tree, so much more dramatic in the snowy landscape. It stands like a silvery sentinel, a quicksilver cascade pouring down from a cobalt blue sky. I can never resist touching its smooth bark, wondering how long it has stood there. I take a deep breath and the cold air stings my nose. The snow squeaks underfoot. And that old owl hoots again. It’s good to be here now.

Steve Silk, a frequent contributor to Seasons, is a Farmington-based writer and garden designer. Read his garden blog at www.clattervalleygardens.blogspot.com.