a winter moment
sometimes it’s nice to walk outside at night during the winter, if it’s not too cold and windless. the snow crunches, but not quite crunches more like creaks and squelches and packs all at once, under your shoes, in the crisp night that’s heavily silent otherwise. no evening insect chirps, bird song, plant rustling that you don’t notice until it’s gone. the darkness falls early, and if the moon is on the other side of the earth, the stars are scintillating pricks in the cold night sky, their brightness seemingly bigger and whiter than in the summertime. your eyes slide across the constellations, picking up the sharpness of the stars until you focus directly on them, at which point they get fuzzy, their edges elusive. and the air wicks away your breath and your warmth, so you head back to the warmth you know exists indoors.
sometimes it’s nice to notice the silence and absence and darkness and bigness while knowing that it will be replaced soon by a season that also seems elusive. for the moment.