Zero

Before dawn it’s zero degrees outside.  

Zero, as if there was no temperature outside. Nothing is moving, no animals or birds, not even the wind. I stand motionless in the dark, not wanting to ruffle the stillness that is holding my part of the world.




The frozen sun rises crystalline and pink on the horizon, shifts to a light canary yellow that fades as the sun warms the air to eight degrees. 

Some would say it’s bitter cold. I call it refreshing. Bitter starts at minus 20. I’m from Wisconsin. Yet when I breathe in, it feels like my lungs get prickly.

Hidden in the stiff, unmoving trees, is the unseen longing of leaves tucked deep inside the wood waiting for spring. Beneath the snow, mice, voles and our neighborhood woodchuck sleeps.  

A cardinal comes to the feeder of black sunflower seeds, his brilliant red feathers bright against the white background. Wrens flitter in, then chickadees, and a Downey woodpecker. The birds chatter softly to the brittle forest.

Squirrels emerge from the warmth of their hidden nests, knock snow off the branches that sparkles in the crisp sunlight as it drifts to the ground.

Zero is also the door between the living and the dead. A synapse. A pause. Which way will this day turn? Some things will die today. Some things will be born.

I look for a sign, as if this stunning scenery wasn’t enough, and listen for words whispered by the snow or the woods, some transcendent message attached to this vision that I can carry with me as I warm to the day.

But I think this is it. The message today is this. I exist only in THIS moment. If I fail to notice it, it ceases to exist and disappears. But if I pay attention to it, then it is born and becomes a reality, a presence that grows and becomes part of me.

Sometimes nature surrounds me with such beauty that I hesitate to breathe for fear of disturbing it. Sometimes the insights are small, like looking down and finding the footprints of a bird in the snow around my feet.