When I opened my eyes, noticing functions, among other things, I could see my kale plants, covered in snow now, still resisting the freezing cold and carrying on. I knew that they were just as good as always, if not better, than in the spring and summer, were I to pick and cook a leaf, and that is because of the function of developing and storing sugar in the stems as an anti-freeze. Looking at some of the trees and shrubs around, I saw and recalled that what would seem barren and lifeless (the leafless maple tree for example) was actually full of life, and you could tell because of the redness near the tips of what would be next year’s leafs – I’ve been told this is where lots of sugars are stored in trees. So even as winter is gripping the land all around, the trees are performing the function of holding over, conserving energy and gathering strength for next year’s bloom – that is how nature not only survives the winter, with each passing year it grows, ideally speaking, were it not for some disruption regime (natural or artificial) interfering with its development. I’ve been told that anti-freeze in cars is very closely related to sugar, yet toxic, including to dogs who are known to lap it up for its sweetness and poison themselves. It makes me think that perhaps we could develop a vehicle coolant fluid that uses the same principles but is biodegradable and non-toxic, so as to reduce the negative effects that existing radiator fluid has on the environment. The storage of photosynthetic energy in sugars that both help the plant persist and also resist freezing in its most critical areas also make me think of new energy storage technologies, that work like batteries but perhaps chemically, such as bacteria or fungi who could be encouraged, bred or engineered to gather photovoltaic energy electrically and somehow mimic part of the latter aspects of photosynthesis in order to store sugars (or some other adjacent equivalent molecule) in a way that both maintained the structure of our technology against the elements and made that energy available on demand.

I also took notice of the hills of mole-dirt that had been piled around, some topped with fresh powder, but some which were obviously new, meaning even as the top-world is freezing, below the ground, there was lots of movement. The moles were performing the function of clearing tunnels of some of the rich subsoil in order to build their network whereby in the spring, when the earthworms are active again near the surface, they can easily access their food sources from beneath. This piling of mineral-rich soil at the surface as well seems to perform a kind of recycling service for the plants above, ensuring the delivery of fresh materials enriching the top so that it can be cycled through again. This made me think of society, including the economy and policy, where occasionally we must re-evaluate and ‘tunnel into’ the subsoil of our mythological and social structures, our programs and various constructs, in order to “conceptually aerate” them, delivering fresh materials to the surface which allows the various infrastructure (companies, governments, nonprofits, etc) to proliferate. It seems like a lack of that happening in an organic way seems to have stagnated the growth and development of our social structures, and this explains somewhat why the market has a hard time adjusting to the ecological and economic needs of humanity and the environment that we are facing at the moment. Perhaps if we were more willing to truly re-examine and refresh our calcified belief systems, we would be able to reinvigorate our society and face our challenges collectively, and this would also be a kind of technology though not a hard physical one.

I appreciated this opportunity to explore these thoughts and their implications, and I’m looking forward to further sessions.

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This exercise started as a prompt from my biomimicry class to go out and do a sequence of nature immersion activities in order to connect with my senses and contemplate my greater connection with nature. I didn’t venture too far from my back door because I live on a picturesque five acres of forest and meadow and pond, and when I started this activity it was snowing, so I elected not to get covered with a layer of downy and freezing white flakes. Still, I was able to sit and close my eyes and then overlook the wintry scene.

Because I have kids and they are super active, I couldn’t simply sit and completely immerse myself as described, and that has to be okay – however, I will note that a part of this experience was the re-realization that kids are a part of nature, and humans are a part of a set of relationships we call human-environmental interactions, that largely set the tone for the experience of ‘wild’ and ‘human’ parts wherever we live. So some of this had me getting up and walking around a bit with my little ones to experience the snow fall and marvel at the world revealed when the sun came out.

With eyes closed, the first thing to note is the insane quiet when the snow is coming down – but it’s a dense quietness. There is the slight muffled hiss from millions of flakes landing all around, of course, and in some cases that takes on a beefy ‘mumf’ as a large flake falls apart to join the others in the heap. Notably the morning which was full of birdsong is conspicuously absent of all but this pervasive abiotic cacophony of silence. I say a cacophony of silence because it’s so bizarre but a dense snowfall is one of the simultaneously quietest things to hear but loudest things to experience, it is so all-encompassing. Just as I began to think this was all I would experience for this part of the journey, the clear tlok of a raven broke the riotous calm, ringing and rattling throughout my consciousness. I hardly ever hear them stop by, so this was interesting, the fact that one was here now of all times was notable. It didn’t get a response, though it continued to call periodically for a few minutes, as if having a conversation with the snow itself.

During this time and later upon opening my eyes, the thought occurred to me that this muffled ever-present hiss was so familiar as to almost be the sound of my consciousness itself. It was comforting like a blanket and it felt like I could drift into it like a dream. With open eyes, it was pretty dreamy as well, with the white blanket of slowflakes curtaining the world in thicker and thicker swaths. I saw the raven, atop the deadened peak of an old cedar across the field, and wondered, in my silly human-centered way, if he was talking to me. I noticed the outstretched tips of branches getting covered in snow, witnessed the capacity of the snow to stick to itself with an almost static bond, and had to wonder if there was some purpose to the trees doing this – do they benefit in some way physically from the contact of these small piles of loosely-conglomerated ice crystals with their needles, even once a year, or is it a psychological thing – do they enjoy it, almost like how we hold out our hands to catch snowflakes in order to see them. I catch a whiff of kindred in that moment between these beings and ourselves then realize it’s silly, in a way – the trees are always like that, they can’t help holding out their fronds like that, it’s the same way to ‘catch’ sunbeams for photosynthesis. Still, the resemblance is uncanny and I can’t shake the feeling, it comforts me almost like the sound of that ever-present hiss.

The sun comes out, shining through the snow still falling, though not as thickly now. I keep expecting to see a rainbow at the opposite end of the sunbeams and have to remind myself that’s not how snow works, though it doesn’t stop me from looking. I wonder how many other humans have had this thought over time, in those liminal moments when sun and snow happen to coexist for the briefest fraction of time. I walk around a bit, exploring different parts of the yard, feeling the soft yielding of new powder over the slight crunch of last night’s frozen layer. Some of the flakes have already started to melt on the Japanese maple and the rhododendron, which is odd when compared to the evergreens who seem to be a picturesque statue of wintry-ness right out of a Christmas catalog. I bend over and look at the sunlight through droplets and wonder at how if at all the plants and animals may experience such beauty and if so, where are the equivalent of ‘eyes’ on a rhododendron, and what colors are available to a sparrow in the prism of a melted snow-droplet. Throughout it all the raven’s continued tlok drops like a drumbeat periodically interrupting, or is it punctuating, my train of thought.

There are more thoughts than that which occurred to me, but I will have to get better at recording them all soon after these experiences because they are so ephemeral or esoteric as to have drifted through me like a ghost, still locked in that space-time of dreams, bound up in the deafening quiet pillow of a million snowflakes.

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