Winter Symbols

There is something in the cold comfort of bare oak trees that will forever nourish me. Throughout my childhood growing up in the bitter cold of Iowa winters, the rasping grey-brown branches of the white oak symbolized life changing. Every season the trees would display some new miracle. In spring time pollen falling in long worm-shaped spirals would sink in rain puddles where I would fish them with Jeffery. Rich green leaves crowned the canopy in the long humid months of summer. In the fall, rust brown leaves would spin from the sky for us to rake into piles and drag into the backyard. Winter exposed the bare branches and coated them in layers of white, billowing snow.

Oak trees are one of the most familiar and homey trees I have experienced. Although I love the trees of Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana, nothing, not even the changing tamarack, seems to connect to so much of my life as the oak tree. Growing up on the border between the oak savanna and the tall grass prairie, oak trees older than the Civil War graced the surrounding hills. On windy days, I would play in the yard imagining I was conducting the trees to play the soft whooshing sounds their leaves made when playing with the breeze. Down the street a hillside of oak trees cooled the summer days and created a miniature wilderness in the midst of our neighborhood. The Nature Center brought together the subtle lines of prairie and oak savanna in a picturesque union of golden fields and brown-green limbs on the Cedar River flood plain.

When I landed in New York City to spend Christmas with my family, the first thing that registered with me was seeing in the darkness the naked winter trees of my youth. I knew when I crossed the river to New Jersey the hillsides would be covered with this wintery symbol. I welcomed the trees, the cold, the grey winter sky, and the brown land into my heart even as those winter symbols drew me back home. For, in Guatemala, the resolute tropical atmosphere, humidity, and overly green 5,000 foot hills, always give me the crawls. It just does not feel right that there is a consistency and never-changing environment around me. I need the cold, the sweaters, the winter light, and the hope of coming spring. Here in Central America, I feel decidedly uncomfortable about the climate (although it’s nice to be warm) for its lack of change, never-falling leaves, and constant unfamiliar and overwhelming green.

In Guatemala, the months hardly seem to vary and there is little seasonal change to look forward to as I cross off the days on the calendar. December in Iowa, Idaho, and New Jersey means cold, the longest night of the year, Christmas, and returning light. December in Guatemala seemed to mean constant fireworks, consistent temperature, posadas, and Gallo Christmas trees. I hardly realized Christmas was approaching here without the seasonal traditions of cookie baking, tree scavenging and decorating, and catching up with home. What is Christmas here? I never learned.

Seeing the bare limbs of the deciduous trees and the ice on Cedar Lake, feeling the warmth of family, and enjoying the spirit of the season through Christmas carols, caresses, and compassion, I felt safe and whole again for the first time in six months. What a remedy to months of solitude. The wintery symbols were all I needed to feel complete again.