I can’t ever remember being able to celebrate a White Winter Solstice except when I lived on Mt. Hood in Oregon years ago. That makes this year extra special. The madrona trees with their reddish bark look especially dramatic in their white coats.

Living on the 48th parallel where light is a precious commodity in winter, this day is particularly meaningful. Today I celebrate the Return of the Light, since from today onward each day lengthens a bit. So even though winter is technically just beginning–tell that to the snowdrifts all around me–from now on the dark days diminish. That is truly something to celebrate this far north.

madrona tree is a meditation in red and white; click to enlarge

Yet perchance the first who came to this well have left some trace of their footsteps. I have been surprised to detect encircling the pond, even where a thick wood has just been cut down on the shore, a narrow shelf-like path in the steep hillside, alternately rising and falling, approaching and receding from the water’s edge, as old probably as the race of man here, worn by the feet of aboriginal hunters, and still from time to time unwittingly trodden by the present occupants of the land.

This is particularly distinct to one standing on the middle of the pond in winter, just after a light snow has fallen, appearing as a clear undulating white line, unobscured by weeds and twigs, and very obvious a quarter of a mile off in many places where in summer it is hardly distinguishable close at hand. The snow reprints it, as it were, in clear white type alto-relievo. The ornamented grounds of villas which will one day be built here may still preserve some trace of this.