Sleepy Snowflakes (Part One)

Honestly, this was just inspired by the beautiful snow at my Memare's house.

   The trees stop.
   It is so sudden that I stop walking and in doing so, almost fall over because of my heavy rucksack. My head whips around to take in my surroundings and I realize that I've stepped into a large clearing. My breath is taken away because firstly, an expanse this large without a single tree disturbing the scenery is very rare, and secondly, it is beautiful.

    Trudging through these forests everyday, the beauty of the living and breathing creature that swallows you whole and spits you out that is the forest, has lost its beauty in my mind. This can happen in life- for instance, snow can be regarded as small crystals that dance down from the sky to the earth where they clump together and become frosting on an entire landscape, like everything is just one huge cake. Or you can look at snow as the annoying white stuff that gets squirms its way down your back and in your gloves and turns into that awful brown gunk when mixed with dirt. This change- the change from something being thought of as beautiful to being thought of as ugly- often happens after time as something once beautiful slowly merges into something ugly and the bad traits overtake the good ones. But this all depends on the way that you look at it.

    I can't remember the last time I stopped to admire the beauty of something. But this is not something that I can ignore. The trees have been my canopy for the last few hours so I cannot tell if it has just started snowing but it is snowing and the sleepy snowflakes fall towards the unbroken white ground that expands until the treeline begins again. The trees on the other side of the gap have their branches dusted with snow, their limbs curving with the weight. The snow sparkles, each tiny grain winking at me. I hear silence, white noise filling my head and heart. My breath puffs out in a cloud and I realize that I've been holding it this entire time, and also that I've been standing here, right before the trees become openness for quite sometime. But as soon as the thought that I should begin moving through the clearing enters my head, it makes me sad. I don't want to track my boots through the perfect, untouched landscape, that would be ruining the first thing that took my breath away in a long time. 

   I decide that I am tired anyway, and sit down in the snow. Usually, I would've backtracked to find a suitable place to start a fire and spend the night, but I quite simply want to stay and just be near the great beauty of what I've noticed. I trace the lines of the trees with my finger, and create binoculars with my hands to focus in on specific areas of the environment. I focus on listening for the occasional sound of snow tumbling off of a tree's branch and hitting the ground. I watch a singular black bird race across the treetops, wings flapping wildly. Soon I find my eyelids falling along with the snowflakes.

   When I wake, I'm cold. It's night, but my freezing fingertips and the icicles that are hanging on to the tip of my nose have awoken me. I fumble in the darkness for my pack, and discover that I'm covered by a layer of snow. Finally I light myself a torch and begin to shuffle back into the trees. After five minutes I chose a tiny clearing and begin to prepare to start a fire. It seems to take forever for my half asleep self to gather kindling and wood, arrange the kindling inside a circle of rock, get the fire going, clear an area of snow for myself and then uncomfortably thaw in front of the flames. 

   See, this is what happens when I try to take in the beauty of something, I think before sleep overcomes me.

   This time when I wake it is around ten in the morning. I've slept in and my poorly made fire has burned out. I sigh and then stand up and begin my regular routine. I decide that I need to take today as a rest day, try to do some hunting and patch up some of my clothing. I spend the day hoping that the snow will have melted somewhat by tomorrow to make travelling easier. And just like that, snow has again become just an inconvenience to me. I also try hunting, but to no avail. I do find some mountain ash, red berries that I save for the next time I catch any game because they make a great jelly. I patch up my clothes and set up a feeble trap meant to catch a small animal not too far away from my fire, in case I get lucky. 

   This is all I accomplish today. It takes far longer to fall asleep tonight than it did last night. I stare at the stars as my mind wanders.

   But then, I hear something. A snapping twig. And then another.

Author's Note

I haven't thought about what happens past Part Two so I don't want to start a book if it's just going to go unfinished, and there will be some back story in the next piece.