Bare Winter Tree Quotes

Winter then in its early and clear stages, was a purifying engine that ran unhindered over city and country, alerting the stars to sparkle violently and shower their silver light into the arms of bare upreaching trees. It was a mad and beautiful thing that scoured raw the souls of animals and man, driving them before it until they loved to run. And what it did to Northern forests can hardly be described, considering that it iced the branches of the sycamores on Chrystie Street and swept them back and forth until they rang like ranks of bells.

When the cold comes to New England it arrives in sheets of sleet and ice. In December, the wind wraps itself around bare trees and twists in between husbands and wives asleep in their beds. It shakes the shingles from the roofs and sifts through cracks in the plaster. The only green things left are the holly bushes and the old boxwood hedges in the village, and these are often painted white with snow. Chipmunks and weasels come to nest in basements and barns; owls find their way into attics. At night,the dark is blue and bluer still, as sapphire of night.

The bare branches of the trees and the frozen grass peeking up from the snow stood out stark and hard in the icy winter night. The nipple on her almost bare breast grew hard, but the skin did not burn, nor did she begin to feel numb. Having become a demon, she could no longer be hurt by the cold.

Idris had been green and gold and russet in the autumn, when Clary had first been there. It had a stark grandeur in the winter: the mountains rose in the distance, capped white with snow, and the trees along the side of the road that led back to Alicante from the lake were stripped bare, their leafless branches making lace-like patterns against the bright sky. Sometimes Jace would slow the horse to point out the manor houses of the richer Shadowhunter families, hidden from the road when the trees were full but revealed now. She felt his shoulders tense as they passed one that nearly melded with the forest around it: it had clearly been burned and rebuilt. Some of the stones still bore the black marks of smoke and fire. “The Blackthorn manor,” he said. “Which means that around this bend in the road is …” He paused as Wayfarer summited a small hill, and reined him in so they could look down to where the road split in two. One direction led back toward Alicante — Clary could see the demon towers in the distance — while the other curled down toward a large building of mellow golden stone, surrounded by a low wall. “ … the Herondale manor,” Jace finished. The wind picked up; icy, it ruffled Jace’s hair. Clary had her hood up, but he was bare-headed and bare-handed, having said he hated wearing gloves when horseback riding. He liked to feel the reins in his hands. “Did you want to go and look at it?” she asked. His breath came out in a white cloud. “I’m not sure.

The Snow Man" One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow; And have been cold a long time To behold the junipers shagged with ice, The spruces rough in the distant glitter Of the January sun; and not to think Of any misery in the sound of the wind, In the sound of a few leaves, Which is the sound of the land Full of the same wind That is blowing in the same bare place For the listener, who listens in the snow, And, nothing himself, beholds Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is. Wallace Stevens, The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens. (Vintage; Reissue edition February 19, 1990)

Why do you take off your clothes in the winter and then cover up in the summer? Baring it all, Grandstanding, Not even one leaf, You naked tree

Nature now, like an athlete, begins to strip herself in earnest for her contest with her great antagonist Winter. In the bare trees and twigs what a display of muscle!

I knew by the signs it would be a hard winter. The hollies bore a heavy crop of berries and birds stripped them bare. Crows quarreled in reaped fields and owls cried in the mountains, mournful as widows. Fur and moss grew thicker than usual. Cold rains came, driven sideways through the trees by north winds, and snows followed.

L.A. kills people.' Jacaranda said. 'You're lucky you're leaving. You'll be able to write.' She looked paler, going through another depression, smoking in bed in her lilac room. The walls were the color of her veins. She was getting too thin, even for the modeling. . .Jacaranda died last winter when the flowering trees were bare. You couldn't even tell which ones once cried the purple blossoms she named herself after.

Autumn" Again the wind flakes gold-leaf from the trees and the painting darkens— as if a thousand penitents kissed an icon till it thinned back to bare wood, without diminishment. The Paris ReviewIssue 109, Winter 1988

I'm thinking that it will be autumn soon," she said, lifting her gaze to his. "Autumn is my absolute favorite season. Spring is overrated. It's soggy and the trees are still bare from winter. Winter drags on and on, and summer is nice, but it's all the same. Autumn is different. I mean, is there any perfume in the world that can compare with the smell of burning leaves?" she asked with an engaging smile. Matt thought she smelled a hell of a lot better than burning leaves, but he let her continue. "Autumn —is thexincgitsinagre changing. It's like dusk." "Dusk?" "Dusk is my favorite time of day, for the same reason. When I was young, I used to walk down our driveway at dusk in the summer and stand at the fence, watching all the cars going by with their headlights on. Everyone had a place to go, something to do. The night was just beginning ..." She trailed off in embarrassment. "That must sound incredibly silly." "It sounds incredibly lonely.

And beneath Cornwall, beyond and beneath this whole realm of England, beneath the sodden marshes of Wales and the rough territory of the Scots border, there is another landscape; there is a buried empire, where he fears his commissioners cannot reach. Who will swear the hobs and boggarts who live in the hedges and hollow trees, and the wild men who hide in the woods? Who will swear the saints in their niches, and the spirits that cluster at holy wells rustling like fallen leaves, and the miscarried infants dug in to unconsecrated ground: all those unseen dead who hover in winter around forges and village hearths, trying to warm their bare bones? For they too are his countrymen: the generations of uncounted dead, breathing through the living, stealing their light from them, the bloodless ghosts of lord and knave, nun and whore, the ghosts of priest and friar who feed on living England, and suck the substance from the future.

All people seek refuge in the shade of the leafy tree, but when winter strips it bare they forsake it without regret.

It was Christmas Eve. Big snowflakes fluttered slowly through the air like white feathers and made all of the Heavenly Valley smooth and white and quiet and beautiful. Tall fir trees stood up to their knees in snow and their outstretched hands were heaped with it. Those that were bare of leaves wore soft white fur on their scrawny, reaching arms and all the stumps and low bushes had been turned into fat white cupcakes.

What he longs for instead, as he sits at the food-strewn table, is winter, winter itself. He wants the essentiality of winter, not this half-season grey selfsameness. He wants real winter where woods are sheathed in snow, trees emphatic with its white, their bareness shining and enhanced because of it, the ground underfoot snow-covered as if with frozen feathers or shredded cloud but streaked with gold through the trees from low winter sun, and at the end of the barely discernible track, along the dip in the snow that indicates a muffled path between the trees, the view and the woods opening to a light that’s itself untrodden, never been blemished, wide like an expanse of snow-sea, above it more snow promised, waiting its time in the blank of the sky.

With so many trees in the city, you could see the spring coming each day until a night of warm wind would bring it suddenly in one morning. [...] Part of you died each year when leaves fell from the tress and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen.

The emptiness imparts a strange melancholy which she could never express...except to think of bare trees under a white winter sky, empty trees, trees waiting for blackbirds to come like ministers at the end of March to preside over the death of snow.

On increasingly warm nice days I liked to sit toward noon on the bench encircling the cherry tree and look at the bare trees, the freshly plowed fields, the green strips of winter planting, the meadows that were already sprouting, and through the fragrance which swells out of the ground with the advent of spring contemplate the mountains, gleaming with the colossal quantities of snow still on them.

The garden was the most beautiful place Margherita had ever seen. In spring, it was a sea of delicate blossom. In summer, it was green and fruitful. In autumn, the trees blazed gold and red and orange, as vivid as Margherita's hair. Even in winter, it was beautiful, with bare branches against the old stone walls and green hedges in curves and curlicues about beds of winter-flowering herbs and flowers.

NOVEMBER Now chill & grey November Come slowly o'er the plain, Drearily the winter wind Sings songs of future pain. Wrapped closely in deep grey, She scarcely will let pass A little ray of sun To cheer the sodden grass. She scatters with her hand The leaves dried up and brown, The few that yet remain From gay October's crown. Her eyes and dark and sad, Sad for the dying year, And often in the mist There falls a silent tear. Beneath a cheerless sky The trees are standing bare, The fog has risen thick And she is no more there.

This afternoon I walked through the city, making for a café where I was to meet Raphael. It was about half-past two on a day that had never really got light. It began to snow. The low clouds made a grey ceiling for the city; the snow muffled the noise of the cars until it became almost rhythmical; a steady, shushing noise, like the sound of tides beating endlessly on marble walls. I closed my eyes. I felt calm. There was a park. I entered it and followed a path through an avenue of tall, ancient trees with wide, dusky, grassy spaces on either side of them. The pale snow sifted down through bare winter branches. The lights of the cars on the distant road sparkled through the trees: red, yellow, white. It was very quiet. Though it was not yet twilight the streetlights shed a faint light. People were walking up and down on the path. An old man passed me. He looked sad and tired. He had broken veins on his cheeks and a bristly white beard. As he screwed up his eyes against the falling snow, I realised I knew him. He is depicted on the northern wall of the forty-eighth western hall. He is shown as a king with a little model of a walled city in one hand while the other hand he raises in blessing. I wanted to seize hold of him and say to him: In another world you are a king, noble and good! I have seen it! But I hesitated a moment too long and he disappeared into the crowd. A woman passed me with two children. One of the children had a wooden recorder in his hands. I knew them too. They are depicted in the twenty-seventh southern hall: a statue of two children laughing, one of them holding a flute. I came out of the park. The city streets rose up around me. There was a hotel with a courtyard with metal tables and chairs for people to sit in more clement weather. Today they were snow-strewn and forlorn. A lattice of wire was strung across the courtyard. Paper lanterns were hanging from the wires, spheres of vivid orange that blew and trembled in the snow and the thin wind; the sea-grey clouds raced across the sky and the orange lanterns shivered against them. The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite.

You think it will never happen to you, that it cannot happen to you, that you are the only person in the world to whom none of these things will ever happen, and then, one by one, they all begin to happen to you, in the same way they happen to everyone else. Your bare feet on the cold floor as you climb out of bed and walk to the window. You are six years old. Outside, snow is falling, and the branches of the trees in the backyard are turning white. Speak now before it is too late, and then hope to go on speaking until there is nothing more to be said. Time is running out, after all. Perhaps it is just as well to put aside your stories for now and try to examine what it has felt like to live inside this body from the first day you can remember being alive until this one. A catalogue of sensory data. What one might call a phenomenology of breathing.

The winter that Boyd turned fourteen the trees inhabiting the dry river bed were bare from early on and the sky was gray day after day and the trees were pale against it. A cold wind had come down from the north with the earth running under bare poles toward a reckoning whose ledgers would be drawn up and dated only long after all due claims had passed, such is this history.

Down in the valley, leaves fall from trees, the branches are bare. All the flowers have faded, their blossoms once so beautiful. The frost attacks many herbs and kills them. I grieve. But if the winter is so cold, there must be new joys. Help me sing a joy of a hundred thousand times greater than the buds of May. I will sing of roses on the red cheeks of my lady. Could I win her favor, this lovely lady would give me such joy I would need no other. (Jack) What are you saying? (Lorelei) Noble lady, I ask nothing of you save that you should accept me as your servant. I will serve you as a good lord should serve, whatever the reward may be. Here I am, then, at your orders, sincere and humble, gay and courteous. You are not, after all, a bear or lion, and would not kill me, surely, if I put myself between your hands. I love you, my lady, Lorelei. Marry me and I swear I shall never again do or say anything to harm you and I will slay anyone who does. (Jack)

Zero Holding I grow to like the bare trees and the snow, the bones and fur of winter. Even the greyness of the nunneries, they are so grey, walled all around with grey stones— and the snow piled up on ledges of wall and sill, those grey planes for holding snow: this is how it will be, months now, all so still, sunk in itself, only the cold alive, vibrant, like a wire—and all the busy chimneys—their ghost-breath, a rumour of lives warmed within, rising, rising, and blowing away.

You think winter will never end, and then, when you don't expect it, when you have almost forgotten it, warmth comes and a different light. Under the bare trees the wildflowers bloom so thick you can't walk without stepping on them. The pastures turn green and the leaves come. You look around presently, and it is summer. It has been dry a while, maybe, and now it has rained. The world is so full and abundant it is like a pregnant woman carrying a child in one arm and leading another by the hand.

Giant gold snowflakes Now the Trees are bare

The north smells different from the city: clearer, thinner. You can see farther. A sawmill, a hill of sawdust, the teepee shape of a sawdust burner; the smokestacks of the copper smelters, the rocks around them bare of trees, burnt-looking, the heaps of blackened slag: I’ve forgotten about these things all winter, but here they are again, and when I see them I remember them, I know them, I greet them as if they are home.

Wild Peaches" When the world turns completely upside down You say we’ll emigrate to the Eastern Shore Aboard a river-boat from Baltimore; We’ll live among wild peach trees, miles from town, You’ll wear a coonskin cap, and I a gown Homespun, dyed butternut’s dark gold color. Lost, like your lotus-eating ancestor, We’ll swim in milk and honey till we drown. The winter will be short, the summer long, The autumn amber-hued, sunny and hot, Tasting of cider and of scuppernong; All seasons sweet, but autumn best of all. The squirrels in their silver fur will fall Like falling leaves, like fruit, before your shot. 2 The autumn frosts will lie upon the grass Like bloom on grapes of purple-brown and gold. The misted early mornings will be cold; The little puddles will be roofed with glass. The sun, which burns from copper into brass, Melts these at noon, and makes the boys unfold Their knitted mufflers; full as they can hold Fat pockets dribble chestnuts as they pass. Peaches grow wild, and pigs can live in clover; A barrel of salted herrings lasts a year; The spring begins before the winter’s over. By February you may find the skins Of garter snakes and water moccasins Dwindled and harsh, dead-white and cloudy-clear. 3 When April pours the colors of a shell Upon the hills, when every little creek Is shot with silver from the Chesapeake In shoals new-minted by the ocean swell, When strawberries go begging, and the sleek Blue plums lie open to the blackbird’s beak, We shall live well — we shall live very well. The months between the cherries and the peaches Are brimming cornucopias which spill Fruits red and purple, sombre-bloomed and black; Then, down rich fields and frosty river beaches We’ll trample bright persimmons, while you kill Bronze partridge, speckled quail, and canvasback. 4 Down to the Puritan marrow of my bones There’s something in this richness that I hate. I love the look, austere, immaculate, Of landscapes drawn in pearly monotones. There’s something in my very blood that owns Bare hills, cold silver on a sky of slate, A thread of water, churned to milky spate Streaming through slanted pastures fenced with stones. I love those skies, thin blue or snowy gray, Those fields sparse-planted, rendering meagre sheaves; That spring, briefer than apple-blossom’s breath, Summer, so much too beautiful to stay, Swift autumn, like a bonfire of leaves, And sleepy winter, like the sleep of death.

Under the blue sky, inhaling the clear, sharp bite of winter air, I was overwhelmed by it all. What should I do? I had no idea. The sky was blue, blue. The bare trees were sharply silhouetted and a cold wind was seeping through.

THOSE BORN UNDER Pacific Northwest skies are like daffodils: they can achieve beauty only after a long, cold sulk in the rain. Henry, our mother, and I were Pacific Northwest babies. At the first patter of raindrops on the roof, a comfortable melancholy settled over the house. The three of us spent dark, wet days wrapped in old quilts, sitting and sighing at the watery sky. Viviane, with her acute gift for smell, could close her eyes and know the season just by the smell of the rain. Summer rain smelled like newly clipped grass, like mouths stained red with berry juice — blueberries, raspberries, blackberries. It smelled like late nights spent pointing constellations out from their starry guises, freshly washed laundry drying outside on the line, like barbecues and stolen kisses in a 1932 Ford Coupe. The first of the many autumn rains smelled smoky, like a doused campsite fire, as if the ground itself had been aflame during those hot summer months. It smelled like burnt piles of collected leaves, the cough of a newly revived chimney, roasted chestnuts, the scent of a man’s hands after hours spent in a woodshop. Fall rain was not Viviane’s favorite. Rain in the winter smelled simply like ice, the cold air burning the tips of ears, cheeks, and eyelashes. Winter rain was for hiding in quilts and blankets, for tying woolen scarves around noses and mouths — the moisture of rasping breaths stinging chapped lips. The first bout of warm spring rain caused normally respectable women to pull off their stockings and run through muddy puddles alongside their children. Viviane was convinced it was due to the way the rain smelled: like the earth, tulip bulbs, and dahlia roots. It smelled like the mud along a riverbed, like if she opened her mouth wide enough, she could taste the minerals in the air. Viviane could feel the heat of the rain against her fingers when she pressed her hand to the ground after a storm. But in 1959, the year Henry and I turned fifteen, those warm spring rains never arrived. March came and went without a single drop falling from the sky. The air that month smelled dry and flat. Viviane would wake up in the morning unsure of where she was or what she should be doing. Did the wash need to be hung on the line? Was there firewood to be brought in from the woodshed and stacked on the back porch? Even nature seemed confused. When the rains didn’t appear, the daffodil bulbs dried to dust in their beds of mulch and soil. The trees remained leafless, and the squirrels, without acorns to feed on and with nests to build, ran in confused circles below the bare limbs. The only person who seemed unfazed by the disappearance of the rain was my grandmother. Emilienne was not a Pacific Northwest baby nor a daffodil. Emilienne was more like a petunia. She needed the water but could do without the puddles and wet feet. She didn’t have any desire to ponder the gray skies. She found all the rain to be a bit of an inconvenience, to be honest.

A gardener relishes the bloom, and with the same spirit accepts the bareness that comes with winter. There is a time to let go, like the trees, to rejuvenate and prepare for a fresh spring ahead. The withered leaf had fallen away, and life was turning a new one.

Alma knelt in the tall grass and brought her face as near as she could to the stone. And there, rising no more than an inch above the surface of the boulder, she saw a great and tiny forest. Nothing moved within this mossy world. She peered at it so closely that she could smell it- dank and rich and old. Gently, Alma pressed her hand into this tight little timberland. It compacted itself under her palm and then sprang back to form without complaint. There was something stirring about its response to her. The moss felt warm and spongy, several degrees warmer than the air around it, and far more damp than she had expected. It appeared to have its own weather. Alma put the magnifying lens to her eye and looked again. Now the miniature forest below her gaze sprang into majestic detail. She felt her breath catch. This was a stupefying kingdom. This was the Amazon jungle as seen from the back of a harpy eagle. She rode her eye above the surprising landscape, following its paths in every direction. Here were rich, abundant valleys filled with tiny trees of braided mermaid hair and minuscule, tangled vines. Here were barely visible tributaries running through that jungle, and here was a miniature ocean in a depression in the center of the boulder, where all the water pooled. Just across this ocean- which was half the size of Alma's shawl- she found another continent of moss altogether. On this new continent, everything was different. This corner of the boulder must receive more sunlight than the other, she surmised. Or slightly less rain? In any case, this was a new climate entirely. Here, the moss grew in mountain ranges the length of Alma's arms, in elegant, pine tree-shaped clusters of darker, more somber green. On another quadrant of the same boulder still, she found patches of infinitesimally small deserts, inhabited by some kind of sturdy, dry, flaking moss that had the appearance of cactus. Elsewhere, she found deep, diminutive fjords- so deep that, incredibly, even now in the month of June- the mosses within were still chilled by lingering traces of winter ice. But she also found warm estuaries, miniature cathedrals, and limestone caves the size of her thumb. Then Alma lifted her face and saw what was before her- dozens more such boulders, more than she could count, each one similarly carpeted, each one subtly different. She felt herself growing breathless. 'This was the entire world.' This was bigger than a world. This was the firmament of the universe, as seen through one of William Herschel's mighty telescopes. This was planetary and vast. These were ancient, unexplored galaxies, rolling forth in front of her- and it was all right here!

The months passed away. Slowly a great fear came over Viola, a fear that would hardly ever leave her. For every month at the full moon, whether she would or no, she found herself driven to the maze, through its mysterious walks into that strange dancing-room. And when she was there the music began once more, and once more she danced most deliciously for the moon to see. The second time that this happened she had merely thought that it was a recurrence of her own whim, and that the music was but a trick that the imagination had chosen to repeat. The third time frightened her, and she knew that the force that sways the tides had strange power over her. The fear grew as the year fell, for each month the music went on for a longer time - each month some of the pleasure had gone from the dance. On bitter nights in winter the moon called her and she came, when the breath was vapor, and the trees that circled her dancing-room were black, bare skeletons, and the frost was cruel. She dared not tell anyone, and yet it was with difficulty that she kept her secret. Somehow chance seemed to favor her, and she always found a way to return from her midnight dance to her own room without being observed. Each month the summons seemed to be more imperious and urgent. Once when she was alone on her knees before the lighted altar in the private chapel of the palace she suddenly felt that the words of the familiar Latin prayer had gone from her memory. She rose to her feet, she sobbed bitterly, but the call had come and she could not resist it. She passed out of the chapel and down the palace gardens. How madly she danced that night! ("The Moon Slave")

I do love a good tree. There it stands so strong and sturdy, and yet so beautiful, a very type of the best sort of man. How proudly it lifts its bare head to the winter storms, and with what a full heart it rejoices when the spring has come again! How grand its voice is, too, when it talks with the wind: a thousand aeolian harps cannot equal the beauty of the sighing of a great tree in leaf. All day it points to the sunshine and all night to the stars, and thus passionless, and yet full of life, it endures through the centuries, come storm, come shine, drawing its sustenance from the cool bosom of its mother earth, and as the slow years roll by, learning the great mysteries of growth and of decay. And so on and on through generations, outliving individuals, customs, dynasties -- all save the landscape it adorns and human nature -- till the appointed day when the wind wins the long battle and rejoices over a reclaimed space, or decay puts the last stroke to his fungus-fingered work. Ah, one should always think twice before one cuts down a tree!

Now you were accustomed to see the bare trees against the sky and you walked on the fresh-washed gravel paths through the Luxembourg gardens in the clear sharp wind. The trees were beautiful without their leaves when you were reconciled to them, and the winter winds blew across the surfaces of the ponds and the fountains were blowing in the bright light.

I returned slowly through the mists of winter. Time lay more thickly about me than the mists. I was so unused to moving through time that I felt like a man walking under water. Time exerted great pressure on my blood vessels and my eardrums, so that I suffered from terrible headaches, weakness and nausea. Time clogged the hooves of my mare until she lay down beneath me and died. Nebulous Time was now time past; I crawled like a worm on its belly through the clinging mud of common time and the bare trees showed only the dreary shapes of an eternal November of the heart, for now all changes would henceforth be, as they had been before, absolutely predictable. And so I identified at last the flavour of my daily bread; it was and would be that of regret.

The Life of a Day Like people or dogs, each day is unique and has its own personality quirks which can easily be seen if you look closely. but there are so few days as compared to people, not to mention dogs, that it would be surprising if a day were not a hundred times more interesting than most people. But usually they just pass, mostly unnoticed, unless they are wildly nice, like autumn ones full of red maple trees and hazy sunlight, or if they are grimly awful ones in a winter blizzard that kills the lost traveler and bunches of cattle. For some reason we like to see days pass, even though most of us claim we don't want to reach our last one for a long time. We examine each day before us with barely a glance and say, no, this isn't one I've been looking for, and wait in a bored sort of way for the next, when, we are convinced, our lives will start for real. Meanwhile, this day is going by perfectly well-adjusted, as some days are, with the right amounts of sunlight and shade, and a light breeze scented with a perfume made from the mixture of fallen apples, corn stubble, dry oak leaves, and the faint odor of last night's meandering skunk.

I. IN WINTER Myself Pale mornings, and I rise. Still Morning Snow air--my fingers curl. Awakening New snow, O pine of dawn! Winter Echo Thin air! My mind is gone. The Hunter Run! In the magpie's shadow. No Being I, bent. Thin nights receding. II. IN SPRING Spring I walk out the world's door. May Oh, evening in my hair! Spring Rain My doorframe smells of leaves. Song Why should I stop for spring? III. IN SUMMER AND AUTUMN Sunrise Pale bees! O whither now? Fields I did not pick a flower. At Evening Like leaves my feet passed by. Cool Nights At night bare feet on flowers! Sleep Like winds my eyelids close. The Aspen's Song The summer holds me here. The Walker In dream my feet are still. Blue Mountains A deer walks that mountain. God of Roads I, peregrine of noon. September Faint gold! O think not here. A Lady She's sun on autumn leaves. Alone I saw day's shadow strike. A Deer The trees rose in the dawn. Man in Desert His feet run as eyes blink. Desert The tented autumn, gone! The End Dawn rose, and desert shrunk. High Valleys In sleep I filled these lands. Awaiting Snow The well of autumn--dry.

Daylight would have shown a wilderness weathered and blowzy, a wanton that had lived her summer too fast and too greedily. It would have shown the white birches pale and shivering in a sudden ague, and here and there an ash or a sumac burning red, like a hectic spot, where the first frosts already had set the marks of their galloping consumption on the cheek of the forest, giving warning of the time when the white plague of the winter would make a massacre of all this present glory and turn the trees to naked skeletons and stretch a bony bare cadaver on every steeper hillside to bleach there until the snows covered things up. But now the kindly nighttime had all signs and threats of approaching death, so that each shriveled speckled leaf, as revealed and traced in the waning light, seemed flawless — a perfect part of a perfect tapestry.

We have come to understand the phenomena of life only as an assemblage of the lifeless. We take the mechanistic abstractions of our technical calculation to be ultimately concrete and "fundamentally real," while our most intimate experiences are labelled "mere appearance" and something having reality only within the closet of the isolated mind. Suppose however we were to invert this whole scheme, reverse the order in which it assigns abstract and concrete. What is central to our experience, then, need not be peripheral to nature. This sunset now, for example, caught within the network of bare winter branches, seems like a moment of benediction in which the whole of nature collaborates. Why should not these colours and these charging banners of light be as much a part of the universe as the atoms and molecules that make them up? If they were only "in my mind," then I and my mind would no longer be a part of nature. Why should the pulse of life toward beauty and value not be a part of things? Following this path, we do not vainly seek to assemble the living out of configurations of dead stuff, but we descend downwards from more complex to simpler grades of the organic. From humans to trees to rocks; from "higher grade" to "lower grade" organisms. In the universe of energy, any individual thing is a pattern of activity within the flux, and thereby an organism at some level.

And I came to a hill that I never saw before. I was in a dismal thicket full of black twisted boughs that tore me as I went through them, and I cried out because I was smarting all over, and then I found that I was climbing, and I went up and up a long way, till at last the thicket stopped and I came out crying just under the top of a big bare place, where there were ugly grey stones lying all about on the grass, and here and there a little, twisted stunted tree came out from under a stone, like a snake. And I went up, right to the top, a long way. I never saw such big ugly stones before; they came out of the earth some of them, and some looked as if they had been rolled to where they were, and they went on and on as far as I could see, a long, long way. I looked out from them and saw the country, but it was strange. It was winter time, and there were black terrible woods hanging from the hills all round; it was like seeing a large room hung with black curtains, and the shape of the trees seemed quite different from any I had ever seen before. I was afraid. Then beyond the woods there were other hills round in a great ring, but I had never seen any of them; it all looked black, and everything had a voor over it. It was all so still and silent, and the sky was heavy and grey and sad, like a wicked voorish dome in Deep Dendo. I went on into the dreadful rocks. There were hundreds and hundreds of them. Some were like horrid-grinning men; I could see their faces as if they would jump at me out of the stone, and catch hold of me, and drag me with them back into the rock, so that I should always be there. And there were other rocks that were like animals, creeping horrible animals, putting out their tongues, and others were like words I could not say, and others were like dead people lying on the grass. I went on among them, though they frightened me, and my heart was full of wicked songs that they put into it; and I wanted to make faces and twist myself about in the way they did, and I went on and on a long way till at last I liked the rocks, and they didn't frighten me any more. I sang the songs I thought of; songs full of words that must not be spoken or written down. Then I made faces like the faces on the rocks, and I twisted myself about like the twisted ones, and I lay down flat on the ground like the dead ones, and I went up to one that was grinning, and put my arms round him and hugged him.

WINTER HAS settled down over the Divide again; the season in which Nature recuperates, in which she sinks to sleep between the fruitfulness of autumn and the passion of spring. The birds have gone. The teeming life that goes on down in the long grass is exterminated. The prairie-dog keeps his hole. The rabbits run shivering from one frozen garden patch to another and are hard put to it to find frost-bitten cabbage-stalks. At night the coyotes roam the wintry waste, howling for food. The variegated fields are all one color now; the pastures, the stubble, the roads, the sky are the same leaden gray. The hedgerows and trees are scarcely perceptible against the bare earth, whose slaty hue they have taken on. The ground is frozen so hard that it bruises the foot to walk in the roads or in the ploughed fields. It is like an iron country, and the spirit is oppressed by its rigor and melancholy. One could easily believe that in that dead landscape the germs of life and fruitfulness were extinct forever.

A LITTLE while, a little while, The weary task is put away, And I can sing and I can smile, Alike, while I have holiday. Where wilt thou go, my harassed heart-- What thought, what scene invites thee now What spot, or near or far apart, Has rest for thee, my weary brow? There is a spot, 'mid barren hills, Where winter howls, and driving rain; But, if the dreary tempest chills, There is a light that warms again. The house is old, the trees are bare, Moonless above bends twilight's dome; But what on earth is half so dear-- So longed for--as the hearth of home? The mute bird sitting on the stone, The dank moss dripping from the wall, The thorn-trees gaunt, the walks o'ergrown, I love them--how I love them all! Still, as I mused, the naked room, The alien firelight died away; And from the midst of cheerless gloom, I passed to bright, unclouded day. A little and a lone green lane That opened on a common wide; A distant, dreamy, dim blue chain Of mountains circling every side. A heaven so clear, an earth so calm, So sweet, so soft, so hushed an air; And, deepening still the dream-like charm, Wild moor-sheep feeding everywhere. THAT was the scene, I knew it well; I knew the turfy pathway's sweep, That, winding o'er each billowy swell, Marked out the tracks of wandering sheep. Could I have lingered but an hour, It well had paid a week of toil; But Truth has banished Fancy's power: Restraint and heavy task recoil. Even as I stood with raptured eye, Absorbed in bliss so deep and dear, My hour of rest had fleeted by, And back came labour, bondage, care.

Oh! to think that he should actually let her come as near to him as that! He knew nothing in the world would make her put out her hand toward him or startle him in the least tiniest way. He knew it because he was a real person—only nicer than any other person in the world. She was so happy that she scarcely dared to breathe. The flower-bed was not quite bare. It was bare of flowers because the perennial plants had been cut down for their winter rest, but there were tall shrubs and low ones which grew together at the back of the bed, and as the robin hopped about under them she saw him hop over a small pile of freshly turned up earth. He stopped on it to look for a worm. The earth had been turned up because a dog had been trying to dig up a mole and he had scratched quite a deep hole. Mary looked at it, not really knowing why the hole was there, and as she looked she saw something almost buried in the newly-turned soil. It was something like a ring of rusty iron or brass and when the robin flew up into a tree nearby she put out her hand and picked the ring up. It was more than a ring, however; it was an old key which looked as if it had been buried a long time.

The front door of the hollow tree faced eastwards, so Toad was called at an early hour; partly by the bright sunlight streaming in on him, partly by the exceeding coldness of his toes, which made him dream that he was at home in bed in his own handsome room with the Tudor window, on a cold winter’s night, and his bedclothes had got up, grumbling and protesting they couldn’t stand the cold any longer, and had run downstairs to the kitchen fire to warm themselves; and he had followed, on bare feet, along miles and miles of icy stone-paved passages, arguing and beseeching them to be reasonable.

When we came back to Paris it was clear and cold and lovely. The city had accommodated itself to winter, there was good wood for sale at the wood and coal place across our street, and there were braziers outside of many of the good cafés so that you could keep warm on the terraces. Our own apartment was warm and cheerful. We burned boulets which were molded, egg-shaped lumps of coal dust, on the wood fire, and on the streets the winter light was beautiful. Now you were accustomed to see the bare trees against the sky and you walked on the fresh-washed gravel paths through the Luxembourg gardens in the clear sharp wind. The trees were beautiful without their leaves when you were reconciled to them, and the winter winds blew across the surfaces of the ponds and the fountains were blowing in the bright light. All the distances were short now since we had been in the mountains. Because of the change in altitude I did not notice the grade of the hills except with pleasure, and the climb up to the top floor of the hotel where I worked, in a room that looked across all the roofs and the chimneys of the high hill of the quarter, was a pleasure. The fireplace drew well in the room and it was warm and pleasant to work.

The Death of Leaves You are not the leaves which blaze with color every fall, then fall ground into the ground. Their death is not your death. No, you are the tree, which moves its energy down in autumn, to the roots, in ample store. Bare branches best prepared for winter cold and winter winds. That’s not to say the loss of leaves is not a loss. The grief of losing all your color, your connection to the sun is real grief. The stripping is a real stripping. But as every fall speaks of coming spring and every winter holds its end in its beginning your own sap will rise again in longer light nourishing every small branch and you, tree, human, living creature will grow green life again.

Up rose the scent of green-apple shampoo. Of river stones once the flood has gone. The taste of winter sky laced with sulfur fumes. A kiss beneath a white-hearted tree. A hot still day holding its breath. We removed the contents one by one. There were two blue plastic hair combs. A tough girl's black rubber-band bracelet. A newspaper advertisement for a secretarial school folded in half. A blond braid wrapped in gladwrap. A silver necklace with a half-a-broken-heart pendant. An address, written in a leftward-slanting hand, on a scrap of paper. Ballet shoes wrapped in laces. From the box came the sound of bicycle tires humming on hot pavement. Of bare feet running through crackling grass. Of frantic fingers unstitching an embroidered flower. Of paper wings rising on a sudden wind. Of the lake breathing against the shore. I didn't say anything. I kept very still.

Even if we speak uncommon tongues, sound grants us the mercy of understanding. That sympathetic quiver of the heart, when a harmony rolls in thirds or a seventh resolves into the octave—it’s the greatest miracle God ever wrought, for it shows us that we are one. There isn’t a person among us, German or Tommy, Aryan or Jew, whole of mind or simple, who doesn’t feel what you feel, what we all feel. In his most naïve moments, he thinks, If I could only play for the Führer, I might make him see it, the unity of God’s creation. And once he sees, how could he continue in this course of evil? He shivers. The evening is cold; winter is already here, though no snow has fallen yet. In the bare branches of the apple trees, he can hear some animal moving, the hop and rough slide of a bird’s feet against bark. But he can’t see the bird, and it has no song to sing now. He pulls at his pipe, blowing the smoke in the bird’s direction.

Indeed, he could not be long in discovering that people beyond a suspicion of unbalance, or not obviously coveting the moment's arrest of attention gained them by their statements, never had experience with or knowledge of the restless dead. Slowly accepting this as evidence that no such things existed, Mr. Lecky found terrors deeper, and to him more plausible, to fill that unoccupied place - the simple sense of himself alone, and, not unassociated with it, the conception of a homicidal maniac quietly pursuing him. The first was exemplified by chance solitude in what he had considered deep woods. No part in it was played by natural dismay which he might have felt at finding himself lost, and none by any tangible suggestion of danger. Mr. Lecky could not even remember where or when it was. Long ago, under a seamless gray sky which would probably end with snow; in an autumnal silence free from birds, unmoved by the least breath of wind, he had come to be walking at random impulse. Leaves, yellow, tan, drifted deep and loose over the difficulties of an uneven hillside. His feet crashed and crackled in them. He was not going anywhere. He had nothing in mind. It might have been this receptive vacancy of thought which let him, little by little, grow aware of a menace. The unnatural light leaf-buried ground, the low dark sky, the solitary noise of his unskilled progress - none of them was good. He began to notice that though the fall of leaves left an apparent bright openness, in reality it merely pushed to a distance the point at which the woods became as impenetrable as a wall. He walked more and more slowly, listening, hearing nothing; looking, seeing nothing. Soon he stopped, for he was not going any farther. Standing in the deep leaves beneath trees bare and practically dead in the catalepsy of impending winter, he knew that he did not want to be here. A great evil - no more to be named than, met, to be escaped - waited fairly close. So he left. He got out of those woods onto an open road where he need not watch for anything he could not see.

The parasol wasn’t a very good cane. Its tip dug into the hard, grassless earth, and the folded frame creaked as Kestrel limped across the grounds. But it brought her where she needed to go. She found Arin walking through the bare orange grove, horse tack draped over his shoulder. It jangled when he stopped and stared at her. He stood, shoulders stiff. As Kestrel came close she saw that his jaw was clenched, and that there was no trace of what her guards had done to him. No bruises. Nor would there be, not for something that had happened nearly a month ago. “Did I shame you?” Kestrel said. Something strange crossed his face. “Shame me,” Arin repeated. He looked up into the empty branches as if he expected to see fruit there, as if it weren’t almost winter. “The book. The inscription I read. The duel. The way I tricked you. The order I gave to have you imprisoned. Did I shame you?” He crossed his arms over his chest. He shook his head, his gaze never wavering from the trees. “No. The god of debts knows what I owe.” “Then what is it?” Kestrel was trying so hard not to ask about the rumors or the woman in the market that she said something worse. “Why won’t you look at me?” “I shouldn’t even be speaking with you,” he muttered. It dawned on her why it had never made sense that Rax had been the one to release Arin. “My father,” she said. “Arin, you don’t have to worry about him. He’ll be leaving the morning of the Firstwinter ball. The entire regiment has been ordered east to fight the barbarians.” “What?” He glanced at her, eyes sharp. “Things can be as they were.” “I don’t think so.” “But…you are my friend.” His expression changed, though not in a way Kestrel could read. “Just tell me what’s wrong, Arin. Tell me the truth.” When he spoke, his voice was raw. “You own me. How can you believe I’ll tell you the truth? Why would I?” The parasol trembled in Kestrel’s grip. She opened her mouth to speak, yet realized that if she did, she wouldn’t be able to control what she said. “I will tell you something you can trust is true.” Arin’s eyes held hers. “We are not friends.” Kestrel swallowed. “You’re right,” she whispered. “We’re not.

…we know what to do with rebels here. They are dug into shallow graves, the Cornishmen who came up the country when he was a boy; but there are always more Cornishmen. And beneath Cornwall, beyond and beneath this whole realm of England, beneath the sodden marches of Wales and the rough territory of the Scots border, there is another landscape; there is a buried empire, where he fears his commissioners cannot reach. Who will swear the hobs and boggarts who live in the hedges and in hollow trees, and the wild men who hide in the woods? Who will sear the saints in their niches, and the spirits that cluster at holy wells rustling like fallen leaves, and the miscarried infants dug into unconsecrated ground: all those unseen dead who hover in winter around forges and village hearths, trying to warm their bare bones? For they too are his countrymen: the generations of the uncounted dead, breathing through the living, stealing their light from them, the bloodless ghosts of lord and knave, nun and whore, the ghosts of priest and friar who feed on living England, and suck the substance from the future.

It was December in the cold state of Michigan. Twinkling lights and Christmas carolers lined the busy sidewalks. The bare trees shivered in the wind, already anxious for Spring's arrival. Grey clouds filled the sky, promising the season's first snowfall. As the end of the year approached, Hadley held a bittersweet feeling in her heart. This year had brought the best and the worst of things, things that altered her life forever.

...as time went on and autumn passed and winter came with its beautiful bare-limbed trees, and soft pearl-grey skies the were slashed with rifts of gold in the afternoons, and cleared to a jewelled pageantry of stars over the wide white hills and valleys around New Moon.

Wisconsin was covered several inches deep in snow -- very beautiful, with light ice-floes on the lakes and rivers, and the bare trees and tall grasses like brown feathers against the snow. As the sun set it was reflected in the ice-covered lakes and the light snow -- but all the same I'm glad that most of my [lecture] tour has been in summer and autumn weather. As soon as winter comes there is an extraordinary effect of desolation in these miles upon miles of uninhabited prairies and hills.

You have consented to time and it is winter. The country seems bigger, for you can see through the bare trees. There are times when the woods is absolutely still and quiet. The house holds warmth. A wet snow comes in the night and covers the ground and clings to the trees, making the whole world white. For a while in the morning the world is perfect and beautiful. You think you will never forget. You think you will never forget any of this, you will remember it always just the way it was. But you can’t remember it the way it was. To know it, you have to be living in the presence of it right as it is happening. It can return only by surprise. Speaking of these things tells you that there are no words for them that are equal to them or that can restore them to your mind. And so you have a life that you are living only now, now and now and now, gone before you can speak of it, and you must be thankful for living day by day, moment by moment, in this presence. But you have a life too that you remember. It stays with you. You have lived a life in the breath and pulse and living light of the present, and your memories of it, remembered now, are of a different life in a different world and time. When you remember the past, you are not remembering it as it was. You are remembering it as it is. It is a vision or a dream, present with you in the

So laced and lush is this ecosystem that we walk our several miles through it today without making a footfall, only scuffs. Carol tells me that these Olympic rain forests and the rough coast to their west provide her the greatest calm of any place she has been. That she can walk in this rain forest and only be walking in this rain forest, moving in simple existence. Surprising, that, because neither of us thinks we are at all mystic. Perhaps, efficient dwellers we try to be, we simply admire the deft fit of life systems in the rain forest. The flow of growth out of growth, out of death . . . I do not quite ease off into beingness as she can. Memories and ideas leap to mind. I remember that Callenbach’s young foresters of Ecotopia would stop in the forest to hug a fir and murmur into its bark, brother tree. . . . This Hoh forest is not a gathering of brothers to humankind, but of elders. The dampness in the air, patches of fog snagged in the tree tops above, tells me another story out of memory, of having read of a visitor who rode through the California redwood forest in the first years of this century. He noted to his guide that the sun was dissipating the chilly fog from around them. No, said the guide looking to canyon walls of wood like these, no, “The trees is drinkin’ it. That’s what they live on mostly. When they git done breakfast you’ll git warm enough.” For a time, the river seduces me from the forest. This season, before the glacier melt begins to pour from the Olympic peaks, the water of the Hoh is a painfully lovely slate blue, a moving blade of delicate gloss. The boulder-stropped, the fog-polished Hoh. Question: why must rivers have names? Tentative answer: for the same reason gods do. These Peninsula rivers, their names a tumbled poem of several tongues—Quinault, Quillayute, Hoh, Bogashiel, Soleduck, Elwha, Dungeness, Gray Wolf—are as holy to me as anything I know. Forest again. For comparison’s sake I veer from the trail to take a look at the largest Sitka spruce along this valley bottom. The Park Service has honored it with a sign, giving the tree’s dimensions as sixteen feet four inches in diameter, one hundred eighty feet in height, but now the sign is propped against the prone body of the giant. Toppled, it lies like a huge extracted tunnel bore. Clambering onto its upper surface I find that the Sitka has burls, warts on the wood, bigger around than my body. For all that, I calculate that it is barely larger, if any, than the standard nineteenth-century target that Highpockets and his calendar crew are offhandedly devastating in my writing room. Evening, and west to Kalaloch through portals of sawed-through windfalls, to the campground next to the ocean. In fewer than fifty miles, mountain and ocean, arteried by this pulsing valley.

The city has seasons, but they’re muted, and the transition of summer to fall to winter has more to do with changing temperatures than it does with the leaves turning, or the trees getting bare, or the grass going from brown to green, or getting older.

I got up early, ate breakfast and walked around the lake. Leaves rustled beneath my feet. I blew my nose and coughed. I lamented the days I’d missed walking when I was not feeling up to going outside. The sun came easier through the trees half-bare. Winter was in the air.

Щом зима се озъби пак и камък пука в леден мрак, замръзва вир, замръзва лес — не тръгвай в Пущинака днес! When winter first begins to bite and stones crack in the frosty night, when pools are black and trees are bare, ’tis evil in the Wild to fare.

Release isn’t stealing from us. It’s a gift—a gift to a woman weighed down, grasping her leaves in the midst of a snowstorm, desperate, so desperate for help. She can feel the twinges and hear the creaking sounds of a splitting break about to happen. She knows she can’t take much more. Tears well up in her upturned, pleading eyes. “God help me. It’s all too much. I’m tired and frustrated and so very worn-out.” The wind whips past her, trailing a whispered, “R-e-l-e-a-s-e.” She must listen or she will break. Her tree needs to be stripped and prepared for winter. But she can’t embrace winter until she lets go of fall. Like a tree, a woman can’t carry the weight of two seasons simultaneously. In the violent struggle of trying, she’ll miss every bit of joy each season promises to bring. No, release isn’t stealing a thing from her. From me. Or from you. Release brings with it the gift of peace. The beautiful, bare winter branch can now receive its snow.

The tree had not changed at all since his childhood. As a boy of six, he had climbed it, not realizing its age, and lacking the experience to know the signs of a rotten branch. The wood beneath his feet had crumbled, and he had tumbled with a cry, hands reaching for branches, but only scraping against bark. And then he hadn't been falling anymore. A man caught him before he struck the ground, and tossed him up into the air again with a chuckle before setting him safe and whole onto his feet. He had been enormous, especially to his child's eyes. A giant of a man, with shoulders so wide they would barely fit through his bedroom door, and eyes as blue as summer. Red-gold hair spilled from a scrap of leather, tying it back, and even crouched before him, Ryam had fairly craned his neck to meet his eyes. "Best to test the branches first, boy," the man had said, smiling. "Never give your weight fully to any one limb when you climb. I cannot promise I will always be in time to catch you, otherwise.

Although Vermont is frigid in the winter, its summertime shimmers. That’s stating the obvious to anyone who knows New England, but it was my brave new world. The mud season that begins in March and lasts well through May buffers one’s mind from winter’s ravages, so that, by the glorious day when neon-green leaf buds first appear on every tree, one can barely remember the bitter February winds streaming off the lake in great, frigid sloughs. Every year, the lake freezes solid around the shoreline, groaning and cracking under the push of the shifting wind, but, in the century-long life of Winloch, the winter had been heard only by the workingmen, men called in to plow the roads, or plumb frozen pipes, men who had the north country in their blood and the dried-up curl of French Canadian on their tongues.

They spent three more long days in the whitened mountain ash trees on the whitened bay. Tatiana baked pies in Nellie’s big kitchen. Alexander read all the papers and magazines from stem to stern and talked post-war politics to Tatiana and Jimmy, and even to indifferent Nellie. In Nellie’s potato fields, Alexander built snowmen for Anthony. After the pies were in the oven, Tatiana came out of the house and saw six snowmen arrayed like soldiers from big to little. She tutted, rolled her eyes and dragged Anthony away to fall down and make angels in the snow instead. They made thirty of them, all in a row, arrayed like soldiers. On the third night of winter, Anthony was in their bed restfully asleep, and they were wide awake. Alexander was rubbing her bare buttocks under her gown. The only window in their room was blizzarded over. She assumed the blue moon was shining beyond. His hands were becoming very insistent. Alexander moved one of the blankets onto the floor, silently; moved her onto the blanket, silently; laid her flat onto her stomach, silently, and made love to her in stealth like they were doughboys on the ground, crawling to the frontline, his belly to her back, keeping her in a straight line, completely covering her tiny frame with his body, clasping her wrists above her head with one hand. As he confined her, he was kissing her shoulders, and the back of her neck, and her jawline, and when she turned her face to him, he kissed her lips, his free hand roaming over her legs and ribs while he moved deep and slow! amazing enough by itself, but even more amazingly he turned her to him to finish, still restraining her arms above her head, and even made a brief noise not just a raw exhale at the feverish end...and then they lay still, under the blankets, and Tatiana started to cry underneath him, and he said shh, shh, come on, but didn’t instantly move off her, like usual. “I’m so afraid,” she whispered. “Of what?” “Of everything. Of you.” He said nothing. She said, “So you want to get the heck out of here?” “Oh, God. I thought you’d never ask.” “Where do you think you’re going?” Jimmy asked when he saw them packing up the next morning. “We’re leaving,” Alexander replied. “Well, you know what they say,” Jim said. “Man proposes and God disposes. The bridge over Deer Isle is iced over. Hasn’t been plowed in weeks and won’t be. Nowhere to go until the snow melts.” “And when do you think that might be?” “April,” Jimmy said, and both he and Nellie laughed. Jimmy hugged her with his one good arm and Nellie, gazing brightly at him, didn’t look as if she cared that he had just the one. Tatiana and Alexander glanced at each other. April! He said to Jim, “You know what, we’ll take our chances.” Tatiana started to speak up, started to say, “Maybe they’re right—” and Alexander fixed her with such a stare that she instantly shut up, ashamed of questioning him in front of other people, and hurried on with the packing. They said goodbye to a regretful Jimmy and Nellie, said goodbye to Stonington and took their Nomad Deluxe across Deer Isle onto the mainland. In this one instant, man disposed. The bridge had been kept clear by the snow crews on Deer Isle. Because if the bridge was iced over, no one could get any produce shipments to the people in Stonington. “What a country,” said Alexander, as he drove out onto the mainland and south.

Quayle himself was a surprisingly elegant man of sixty winters or more. (One might equally have said “sixty springs” or “sixty summers,” but that would have been inaccurate, for Quayle was a man of bare trees and frozen water.)

As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.” —Genesis 8:22 (NIV) As I walked to my mom’s house next door, I looked at the silhouettes of birds in the trees with the sun setting behind them. The road was still warm beneath my bare feet, and my leg muscles were tired from hours spent doing yard work and clearing the garden for winter (or “putting it to bed” as my husband calls it). Blackbirds rested on the stark branches, watching me until I was just beneath them, and then they flew away in a rush of energy. Today was warm. The sun bright. Most of our trees have lost their leaves, but our maple by the barn was holding on, wearing its marvelous colors like an ornate cloak. “Sabra, put shoes on!” the neighbor shouted from her doorway. “It’s nearly winter, don’t you know?” This is our joke. Every season she notices my feet and my tendency to be barefoot as long as possible. In March she calls out, “It must be spring! You don’t have shoes on!” And then when the snow falls, she yells, “Oh no, look at those boots! We must be in for a long winter.” With each step, I feel the warm tarry road beneath my feet. In a week or two, I’ll be wearing big thick socks and warm shoes. For now, I take in the beauty of a sunny path and hold it as a gift to help me through the long winter ahead. Dear Lord, may I always be mindful of the beauty in every season You have placed beneath my feet. —Sabra Ciancanelli Digging Deeper: Ps 19:1; Eccl 3:1–4

time went on and autumn passed and winter came with its beautiful bare-limbed trees, and soft pearl-grey skies that were slashed with rifts of gold in the afternoons, and cleared to a jewelled pageantry of stars over the wide white hills and valleys around New Moon.

When the valley swallows Beth, my eyes go to the bare trees. They’ve been stripped of nearly all their leaves, their most fragile organs, expelled to conserve energy in order to endure the winter season. Sometimes you have to lose parts of yourself just to survive.

She adored the tree itself because it dared to be beautiful in every season with its bright chartreuse foliage of spring and summer, its red flames of fall, and the elegance of its bare branches, which would hang with any fruit that remained like sweet lanterns in winter.

MELANCHOLY SIXTIES She walked endlessly on the deserted road Into the shadows Fear of the unknown held no meaning Fresh leaves the color of fall Lay perfectly at her feet Her hair blowing in the cool breeze She hears the sound of music coming from the bristling of blowing trees Melancholy sixties, I think Such a familiar tune It's going to turn winter soon A dim of light danced on the creek nearby Anxious to get there, She swayed to the lyrics in her mind Playing a memory from when she was small Reckless from the spirit of being free Barely a remembrance of pain from days passed How she buried them in a deep grave Stomped on them with the weight of forgiveness, self-taught It was the hardest lesson of all But it matters none The years have set her free Standing near the shallow creek Lay the fall leaves placed perfectly at her feet Where the sun glistens She hears the sound of music coming from the bristling of blowing trees Melancholy sixties, I think Such a familiar tune It will turn winter soon.

tarmac only slightly cracked, at other times the tarmac was broken and fractured by the plants growing through. But on the road went, narrowing slightly. He could feel the change in the air, smelling the sea breeze, the scent of salt on his face. It was fresher up here, away from the perfume of the trees and the winter undergrowth, the bare

Behold the tree rich with leaves, whose branches covered in luxuriant greenery fill up the air. See how the people take refuge in its spreading shade from the burning rays of the sun, and how they pluck its low-hanging fruit. Then look upon this same tree in winter. See how the cold winds have stripped it bare, and how all of its leaves have fallen, and how its limbs are empty and exposed like a decaying corpse which embalming has not preserved. See then how the people forsake it, cutting off its branches to throw them in the fire.

The plane ride had been chillier than a winter dip in a Russian river, but I didn’t care. I didn’t need her to like me to do my job. I scanned the city’s near-empty National Cemetery, listening to the eerie howl of the wind whistle through the bare trees. A deep chill swept through the cemetery, burrowing past my layers of clothing and sinking deep into my bones.

What is it about the fall that seems sentimental and romantic? There is something magical and mysterious about the way the leaves drop to the ground and how they shimmer in red, gold, and brown, creating a blanket of memories. And as you watch the trees become bare, a sweet, nostalgic feeling exists inside of you as you stroll the sidewalks that glisten with traces of rain, sprinkled across each path like little jewels. Your heart beats in a different rhythm as your thoughts dwell and wander about. You remember things that should be forgotten because they broke your heart once, and yet you allow them to linger for a while for the sake of reminiscing. You parade with the hopeless romantics and the brokenhearted down the streets, alone, reliving moments that once were. You hold on to these memories until the last day of fall, hoping that by winter, you will forget them all.

white landscape of bare trees and snow-covered fields. This is not where I saw myself landing at the end of my life. I grew up in a place of dust and heat and blindingly bright summers, and my first winter

They give me a husband and say: That’s who you are! They give me a home and say: That’s who you are! They give me a child and say: That’s who you are! But somehow or other I may lose these chattels and will be left behind – alone, without external embellishments; and like a bare tree in winter, I must be able to replenish my foliage by drawing nourishment from my own roots.

The Leaf by Maisie Aletha Smikle Am sometimes green Am sometimes yellow Am sometimes brown And sometimes black I shade the Amazon I cushion the ground I feed hungry mouths And feed the soil Am kind always giving Never asking anything in return I retain dew to keep you cool I excrete oxygen so you may breathe I give I only give I am a giver A tree with all its branches is naked without me I clothe the tree to hide its shame In shades of green In shades of yellow And many shades in between In Spring I bloom In Summer am scorch In Winter I freeze In the Fall I fall to crown the surface of the ground My aim is to please I bloom to give you joy Am scorched so that I may fall To moisten the soil and make it fertile To cushion the ground For another round Always giving Never taking Tree branches unclothe Naked without their leaves Bare ground exposed Without unfallen leaves Compelling you to leave Leaves sustain and leaves maintain Leaves leave you living Always giving while taking nothing

The Man in the Tree" I sat in the cold limbs of a tree I wore no clothes and the wind was blowing You stood below in a heavy coat The coat you are wearing And when you opened it, baring your chest White moths flew out and whatever you said At that moment fell quietly onto the ground The ground at your feet Snow floated down from the clouds into my ears The moths from your coat flew into the snow And the wind as it moved under my arms Under your chin, whined like a child I shall never know why Our lives took a turn for the worse, nor will you Clouds sank into my arms and my arms rose They are rising now I sway in the white air of winter And the starlings cry...lies down on my skin A field of ferns covers my glasses; I wipe Them away in order to see you I turn and the tree turns with me Things are not only themselves in this light You close your eyes and your coat Falls from your shoulders The tree withdraws like a hand The wind fit into my breath yet nothing is certain The poem that has stolen these words from my mouth May not be this poem

In the fall copious fruit ripens and seeds are scattered until finally all the leaves are shed in preparation for winter. If you rake fallen leaves into a pile and then examine them, you will see that each one shows a consummately clean break at the same place near the base of the stem. The fall of leaves is highly choreographed. First the green pigments are pulled back behind the narrow row of cells marking the border between stem and branch. Then on the mysteriously appointed day this row of cells is dehydrated and becomes weak and brittle. The weight of the leaf is now sufficient to bend and snap it from the branch. It takes a tree only a week to discard its entire year’s work, cast off like a dress, barely worn but too unfashionable for further use. Can you imagine throwing away all of your possessions once a year because you are secure in your expectation that you will be able to replace them in a matter of weeks? These brave trees lay all of their earthly treasures on the soil, their moth and rust doth immediately corrupt. They know better than all the saints and martyrs put together exactly how to store next year’s treasure in heaven where the heart shall be also.

the water freezes solid, the baby salamanders will die. It’s a good thing deciduous trees just happen to solve this problem. In winter, when there is very little warmth in the sun, bare branches allow a lot of warmth to penetrate. The movement of water over the uneven bottom also protects the stream from suddenly freezing.

I walk home, thinking of another place, of seemingly long endless summers and the shade of different kinds of trees; and then of winters when the branches of the trees were bare, so bare that, recalling them now, it seems inconceivable to me that I looked at them and did not think of the summer just gone, and the spring soon to come, as illusions; as dreams, never fulfilled, never to be fulfilled.’ Philoctetes.

Grass was frosted white, rhododendron leaves curled tight, winter bare trees backlit by the moon.

Once the Tree Was in Bloom- Bruno K. Öijer Translated from the Swedish by Victoria Häggblom & Bruno K. Öijer colors and thread unraveled from the weave I heard steps leading away from me I stood alone among everything ravaged and bare once the tree was in bloom once the branches glimmered I prayed to the seeds inside me I prayed the tree would bloom again I saw the future a face that had run dry a doomed river everyone drank from I saw all humankind stare I saw men and women caress the executioner inside them I saw that we had lost this planet once the tree was in bloom once the presence of a hungry winter night was strong enough for you to put out pieces of bread along your windowsill once you were alive and carried a name once you nursed the seeds inside you the seeds of a tree and moon leaves fell star leaves drifted down in your body

Out the window, the trees were bare and scrawny-looking, and the road was lined with dirty snow from the week before. I actually liked the desolation of winter; it was the season when it was okay to be unhappy.

I sang of leaves, of leaves of gold, and leaves of gold there grew: Of wind I sang, a wind there came and in the branches blew. Beyond the Sun, beyond the Moon, the foam was on the Sea, And by the strand of Ilmarin there grew a golden Tree. Beneath the stars of Ever-eve in Eldamar it shone, In Eldamar beside the walls of Elven Tirion. There long the golden leaves have grown upon the branching years, While here beyond the Sundering Seas now fall the Elven-tears. O Lórien! The Winter comes, the bare and leafless Day; The leaves are falling in the stream, the River flows away. O Lórien! Too long I have dwelt upon this Hither Shore And in a fading crown have twined the golden elanor. But if of ships I now should sing, what ship would come to me, What ship would bear me ever back across so wide a Sea?

But once, on midwinter morning, this is where the party was. Durrington Walls is (probably) where the builders of Stonehenge lived and is the site of another circle made of enormous wooden posts, known today as the Southern Circle. Recreations of the Circle show it as a surreal forest of gigantic, bare tree trunks, angular, geometric, full of long, straight lines and long straight shadows. And this site, unlike Stonehenge, was orientated towards the midwinter sunrise. It was in use at the same time as Stonehenge as well – so perhaps people welcomed the sun in the wood and bid it farewell among the stones.

When winter first begins to bite and stones crack in the frosty night, when pools are black and trees are bare, ’tis evil in the Wild to fare.