The Dead of Winter: A World Alive with Wonder

My friends remind me that I’m a human being, homo sapiens… but sometimes, watching my breath turn to crystals in the cold blue air, I feel as wild and free as any animal. I squint into the eyes of a squirrel, an eagle, or an elk, and I am caught in the center of the universe. The snow dampens all sound, holding space and freezing time.

Calm under the winter moon, I wonder if my brother is looking up at that same bright face in the sky. Here in a snowy infinity, I think about my place in the universe. If I’m really a human being, what is my role here in the Rocky Mountains? Last year I tried my luck in New York City, but I missed getting snow packed in my shoelaces, and I missed the robin’s encouraging song: “cheerily, cheer up, cheer up, cheerily, cheer up.” I’m lucky to be back in Colorado, teaching for Gore Range Natural Science School, sharing with local kids the splendor of this mountain landscape.

More than anywhere else, the mountains inspire questions in my mind. How do flowers survive the winter? Why do squirrels chatter at me from the trees? Did wolves imagine retrieving balls before we invented tennis?

Even in the “dead” of winter, there is life all around. Under the snow, bears sleep soundly, their hearts beating just 8 times per minute. Do they dream? I assume they do, since they have 3 or 4 months to kill. I wonder if they dream of commonplace, quotidian things like grass and berries, or if their dreams transcend reality, like mine often do. Since I have dreamt of being a bear, is there a bear somewhere that has dreamt of being me? Down below the snow, in the surface of the ground, pocket gophers are busy digging their labyrinthine homes, living off stored seeds and grasses. Do they have their eyes open down there?

I don’t mean to pin too many humanoid tails on the donkey, but I teach kindergarteners, and sometimes kids ask the most interesting questions.

We often see Steller's Jays and Grosbeaks swooping through the evergreens. Their varied plumages- of blue mohawks, yellow masks, or red hoods- remind me of superhero costumes, but kids wonder where they spend the night. Do they roost near a friend, exchanging "Good night’s" before dozing off?

Bald eagles have their mate to sleep next to, but do they have “his” and “hers” sides of the branch? They preen their white and black feathers to a perfect shine, apparently conscious of aesthetic beauty. So do they turn that sense of beauty outward? Do they see the perfection of ice on the river, or the blue sky glittering into the infinite? Do they contemplate the beauty of snowflakes, slow dancing through the air?

I crouch silently under pine boughs, watching elk glide though the forest, as smoothly as fish swimming through water. I tell a group of first graders that the elk herd is led by a single matriarch, who talks to the herd in barks and squeals. I have seen matriarchs in action, standing alert at the edge of a clearing, leading the herd into new pastures and potential danger. Does she let that power go to her head? Is she bossy? Does she let the kids play in the snow?

In the springtime, there is a robin that loves the tree behind my house. Where is she now? Gone away? I miss her so much, does she miss me? Wherever she is, does she long for time to go faster, so that she can come back to her beloved tree, to sing her encouraging song, “cheerily, cheer up, cheer up, cheerily, cheer up”? Here, in December, sometimes I need that encouragement. Wherever my robin is, maybe in Zacatecas, I wonder if she longs for my daily “hello birdie,” whispered through my bedroom window.


Rodney Beall is a Graduate Fellow in Natural Science Education at the Gore Range Natural Science School where he teaches school children and talks to animals. (www.gorerange.org)