Tundra and Silence

It's been an arctic freeze the last two and a half days. Starting Wednesday with temperatures of -3 to -9, Thursday from -13 to -17, and today -26 and now -4.

I don't care what anyone says, but when it is this cold outside, the temperature, to me, feels exactly the same. The only difference I notice is that the snow is a lot more crunchy, even though it was powdery at one point in time. I also notice my hounds get more and more efficient in doing their duties out in the elements. My car wheezes like a kid with asthma just to get going in the morning. And even the thermostat set at 65 degrees in my house, it feels like a tropical heatwave as I sit composing this latest entry to my world on the web.

I can't help but think about what tundra is, since really, I have never seen nor experienced it first hand. I can't help but think that it, too, is raw, unadulterated coldness, that still freezes the inside of your nose, or makes you cough if you inhale just a bit too deeply.

And no one is outside. And there's no traffic.

And when we get a fresh white blanket of snow, even before the slate gray sky releases its frozen bounty, the silence is deafening. I can hear myself think. I sometimes think that I can hear someone a hundred miles away. It's such a filtered, focused silence that if I had to be in it for too long, I'd go crazy hearing the synapses fire in my brain, thinking.

Despite the lack of appreciation I have for the cold and the snow, there really isn't anything better than that serene silence that comes from gently falling snow. And even when I've been drained of all my energy and nonsense I experience during the day, I feel invigorated by the chill on my cheek, the crispness of the air on my ears, and the gentle softness that is the silence of winter.

I cast my sigh to the brisk evening like tonight, to return indoors back to reality, comfort, and my existence, refreshed by my moment in the tundra, and relaxed like a swami after an hour of meditation and yoga, ready to again get back to the noise and action that is my existence.