All Alone

Empty Trails
Cincinnati Nature Center

The Frozen Falls on Avey's Run

It accentuates the absence of all else—the sound of a drip into water, round and clean, against the backdrop of stillness. While, throughout the darkened house, all other activities pause.
The silence then, so great, that it becomes, instead of absence, its own presence—a tangible thing.
Rarely unspoiled.

I ventured out into Friday’s frigid air and roamed the trails, alone. For these woods, so loved by so many on any other day, today, were barren.
And, beneath hat and hood, the stillness, very strange.

Several times I stopped and stood, puffing warm air into cupped hands and letting it rise to wash my face in steamy clouds. And found myself dressed in frosty lashes, squinting against the brightness of a cloudless January sky.

Watching Deer

In the distance, the call of a Barred Owl, this wintry day, his. And I imagined him fluffed against the cold somewhere, hidden against the brown and white of densely crossed winter branches, still.
While deer, frozen forms on a sheltered hillside, watched me pass.

Winter Light on Avey's Run

I hopped across the crossing stones frozen in the thick white stillness of the creek bed of Avey’s Run, the low light casting long shadows onto the steep hillsides on either side. All alone in the depths of these woods, I knelt in the middle on the cold and slippery surface. The waters that roar here each spring, now still.
To listen to the silence of the winter woods.
Drip, drip, dripping beneath me.

Ice