what we have here is a failure to communicate

It snowed again. This seems to be something the weather feels like doing a lot this winter, and frankly I couldn’t be more pleased. It has been fascinating to explore the Park over the last couple of months, and see what it looks like with snow covering it’s bald heads.

I went out this morning on a collecting trip. I collected quite a few things – blue drifts flirting with pink granite, a patch of sapphire blue open water on Jordan Pond, a huge rock petit four frosted with snow, bubbling water beside bubbles of ice, a troll’s view of the Cobblestone Bridge…

I stumbled through huge snow drifts near the pond, often not even able to find the trail because of the work of the ferocious wind. Abandoning that plan, I went tripping down the carriage road to Jordan Stream. A wise decision, and one that provided endless fun for my eyes. The ice had built numerous sculptures, making vertical bridges between bank and water, weird bubbles, and fern-like fronds.

The snow was light but ten inches deep, and as I waded along now and then my foot would crunch through into the old snow, knocking me off balance. I turned to look behind me and laughed to see my wiggly trail, the only thing marring the smooth surface of the road paved in white.

The Cobblestone Bridge leapt across Jordan Stream, each of it’s stones wearing a tiny cap. I slithered down the bank so that I could get some pictures from beneath the bridge. I had never stopped to inspect the colorful lumpy surface of the cobblestones, and made myself dizzy doing so.

I ran for awhile on my way back, somehow moving with more ease through the snow that way. When I grew tired and was almost back to my car I stopped, and without thinking threw myself down on the ground. I made my first snow angel in four or five years, and then lay in it’s arms looking up through the trees at the cold blue sky.

The Park is a different place during the winter, I mused, as the snow tickled my neck with icy fingers. I feel that I have gotten to know a new side of an old friend. I have been taken into Acadia’s confidence. Without it’s millions of summer tourists, the Park has room to breathe, to renew, and it can share itself in a different way.

The stillness and solitude that I have discovered, the quiet energy, and the sense of reflection that seems to fill the Park, have brought a peace to my mind that I have never found in the lively, colorful summer months. I have felt embraced, drawn both into and out of myself by the quiet, listening mountains and trees.

Someday I’ll have to find a way to say “Thank you” to this friend. For now, I fill my camera and my memory with the things the Park chooses to show me, and add them to my collection.

Sometimes I make snow angels. I don’t think Acadia minds.