These Nights and the Snow and the Books

This time last year, I was in the heart of the Rocky Mountains. 

It was already beginning to snow - and frequently - with white blankets of storms swirling in one day and blown away by sunshine the next. It was a strange and tender time in my heart. I went there to dwell on my life and to write, but I hardly did. I never really spoke while I was there - mostly I just listened. 

There is a certain kind of meditation that happened for me out there. It was not intentional, by any means. It was, in a way, forced on me by factors beyond my control. 

One, there was no cell service. That alone forced me to forget about scrolling through Instagram as a mindless hobby. I carried books around. I read so many books. And while I wasn't really writing, at least I was reading. I was soaking up the beauty of my beloved craft, even if I wasn't actively creating it. Reading books might not seem so different from reading off a screen, but it really is. Somehow, it's quieter. I go deeper into myself, while at the same time, farther away than I ever get when I'm scrolling on social media. Reading took me beyond myself, beyond the rickety twin bed and the screeching porch rocker, beyond the Rockies. 

This was a form of meditation for me, losing myself (the shallow, contrived, play-acting part of myself) to find that part of myself that does not babble mindlessly but that listens, and watches. 

There is a me within me. She is my core, and she is nothing that you see. She is not funny, or tragic, or dramatic, or angry, or sorrowful, or idealistic, or anything, really. She is beyond all that, further back than all that. She is quiet. She is eyes and ears who aren't looking for anything in particular. She is a pure drop of me-ness in a sea of world-ness.

And she is who I became when I read my books.

And what else brought me down to her? The snow brought me to her. I liked watching it fall like dust blown off a windowsill down on onto my life. My life was suddenly fully contained between Long's Peak and Big Thompson Canyon. There was little else. There was no downtown Atlanta, there was no Veritas Christian Academy, there was no ex-boyfriend, no childhood home, no bible studies with girls I "kinda sorta know" and no one that knew me. 

That was all gone, and with it, gone was the Sarah that was concocted to survive in those worlds.

I was now somehow different.

That's not to say the same petty worries and lingering character flaws didn't follow me, because they did. But, thrust out of my normal environment into this strange and beautiful world, I had less time to exercise them.

It was a tender time, a raw time, and I was busy doing not much of anything. I spent nights either alone, in my small and quiet twin bed beside a drafty window, or with Jon. His cabin was sweet and small and in need of a woman. We spent many nights together, on our sides, gazing up at the window to our right, outside of which some sort of moon was always hanging. I liked to listen to his voice as I was falling asleep. 

I was unable to write. And most of the time, I was unable to speak. But lying here, in the safe blanket of darkness, I could begin to whisper fragments of thoughts to him. It was different - he didn't try and make sense of anything I said. Some boys before had tried to "understand" me, and I never felt like he tried to. He just held my hand, squeezed it maybe, and said very little.

This brought me down to myself, to my core of "me-ness". These nights, and the snow, and the books, and many other things which I long to write about as well. 

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