The Images We Leave

The snow is awesome, adorned with bright little sparkles like diamonds.

Yet, charcoal-colored shadows were drawn across the land, intersecting an intrusion of a massive boulder—an erratic left behind by glaciers before even my time.

I ascend the mountainside at a deliberate pace, constrained by the steep terrain. The crampons squeak against the hard snow, which is compacted by the cold and devoid of any soft meaning.

Sometimes, you forget to look up. And then, when you do, you see it through the leafless branches of winter's skeletal fingers—a peak glistening white, with whistling wind. I stop often to take it in and breathe.

Taking off layer after layer that I will soon again need, the slow crunch and squeak of snow hypnotize me. I drink needed water, refreshing my spirit, not stopping in order to keep warm. But The beauty pulls me forward—there's more and more of heaven everywhere.

Now, I'm walking along a path of little lights, as if stars have fallen throughout the bitter night and frozen to the surface of the trail. It's a path of blue, red, and white crystals shimmering in the direction of the Son.

What path am I on, and where am I going?

My faithful dog turns at words on a board buried in the snow and looks through the woods, searching for an easier path for the old man to ascend the final steps to his path’s end.

My path is bringing me closer to heaven with each step. I long to stand upon the pure white trail above.

Now, the darkness of the spruce before the high peaks put me in shade and coldness once again. I'm occasionally pierced by long sunbeams that find their way through gaps where trees once stood, taken down by life's fierce winds or its struggles and thunderstorms.

There is a sharp crack as the temperature drops and bark snaps. I can feel my face tighten with the change and wonder what wrinkles are being mapped with time.

The dark gray trunks, devoid of bark from long struggles of the mountainside, take on faces of old men and ancient explorers, with curves resembling eyebrows and mouths left from a knot full of fallen snow on their bottom lips.

Each step is now counted in heartbeats: lub-dub, lub-dub, step. Lub-dub, lub-dub, step.

The lengthening shadows from the setting sun make the snowshoe hare tracks much easier to see, reminding us that even in this seeming solitude, I share it with invisible lives on my journey toward truth.

As I go, the hill grows steeper, and my pace slows further. Yet now, with age and measured steps, I receive its beauty.

Look—here is a crispy, orange-brown beech leaf that has finally left its tentative hold, having clung to the small branches that were its home. Its family of leaves still shakes in the slight breeze, tapping like falling paper among the little branches. But this one leaf has flown forth to rest upon the snow.

Absorbing what few winter rays of sun there are, its warmth has melted a depression in the snow. The leaf then blew away, leaving an oval-shaped impression with pointy edges—the perfect outline from how it was formed and how it had lived.

I also, Lord, want to leave an impression exactly in Your image and exactly for the reason I was formed.