Where the Snow Ends

The mountains appear before me like perfectly whipped peaks of meringue, but they bring me little joy today. I sigh audibly behind my steering wheel.

My truck speeds past the WOMEN ARE NOT LIVESTOCK sign strapped to a length of fence on the outskirts of town, though, buried in snow as it is, now only reads WOMEN, in angry crimson letters. I roll my eyes, ever internalizing the absurdity that the message need even be stated in the first place—it means I am almost home.

In the winter, my home place is devoid of smell and color—a monochrome of coolness.

I shiver, remove a hand from the wheel and adjust my knit hat further down over my ears.

The fenceposts wizzing by become increasingly enveloped in white until they disappear altogether. And as I take note of the thermometer’s downward progression, my mind, too, drifts down a worn path of rumination.

The walls are closing in, my pulse is racing; the hamster spins her wheel near off its hinges, the prowling cat paces back and forth, back and forth. Something is on fire in the basement, a tea kettle screams on the main floor, and I wonder what am I doing? In this picturesque world of winter, I feel lost, less myself for all its splendor.

Upon reflection, I feel I have survived two winters in Crested Butte—nearly three, now—but a certain sadness seems to layer on with each passing storm, and the fire in my heart is no match for the collective burden of precipitation.

Sometimes in a moment of panic I imagine the surrounding mountains shedding their white plates of armor all at once, cementing me into a tomb of ice and blackness.

Maybe the heart of the matter is that I spent my first winter season in survival mode, recovering from ACL surgery, then my second giving my full effort to the snow since I missed out so majorly on the first—now? I suppose I am just as confused as you are, reader.

Perhaps I am just profoundly cold and miss walking long distances freely without my toes turning into blanched little corpses every time I leave the house.

Any which way, I ache damn near everyday to stand closer to the earth, with nothing but the soles of my shoes between me and the dirt.

I needed to leave, to go out and find where the snow ends.

The minute my trail runners touched dirt this past weekend, and the sun kissed my skin, I felt like myself again. The hamster in my brain took a siesta from her spinning, the cat took a nap, and I was reminded of how I felt when I went to New Mexico in January:

“Visiting New Mexico last weekend was the reset I needed. The burnt-tones, the art, the heat in the chiles—red, green, or Christmas?

Both, yes, everything, all of them, please.

The way the landscape rolls, one pastel mound dotted with evergreen scrub, to the next.

The way you can almost hear the dryness—the brittle skeleton of the cholla snapping between my fingers.

I can see why Georgia O’Keeffe came here, made her home here, away from the grey-wet concrete of New York.

With its towering monoliths—the loneliest place in the world.

I can see why she fell in love with painting dried bones and flowers. Why she collected skeletons and rocks and small desiccated things.

She’d spent time among people who moved a million miles an hour, no time to study the hidden world between petals, the city in a grain of sand.

The desert seems to sigh, in no rush to be anywhere; an attentive gaze is the key to unlocking its secrets.

She knew. She was willing to watch, to wait.

As I walked through the streets of Santa Fe, popping in an out of the few galleries open at such an early hour, I realized my soul hungered for the colors and textures brought to life by the hands of artists.

I wanted to see what they see. To imagine as they do.

To step into another person’s world for just a moment and out of the cold, to be wrapped in the warmth of desert colors.

To be reminded that the world is in fact full of color, aside from blue, grey, blinding white and brown…

It was as healing and revitalizing as a visit to the mineral hot-springs…” 2/5/23

Santa Fe, Taos & Ojo Caliente

As I ran along the earthen trail, I pulled deep breaths of 40 degree air into my lungs, whiffing the sharp, tangy scent of pine needles; their odor pierced my heart in that bitterly nostalgic, sad-happy way it always tends to.

I padded 13 miles in and out of arroyos, up and down meandering washes, over sand and dirt and rock, until I was full to the brim with satisfaction.

Afterwards I went to Mt. Princeton Hot Springs, soaked in the warm, sandy-bottomed pools lining frigid Chalk Creek, and observed the chaos of Spring Break as it unfolded around me.

The smell of booze hung heavily in the air despite the breeze, and I felt immense relief that I was an outsider to the party, in my own bubble of blissful warmth.

I spent the night in my truck and the next morning, while exploring more trails, I was struck by a familiar, welcoming smell.

As I wound my way through Pinyon trees, scolded by the occasional Scrubby Jay and startled Flicker, my feet crunching on frozen trail, suddenly, on an inhale, my mind’s eye swam with earth-tones—burgundy, clay, sand, and mahogany. I stopped in my tracks and pulled in another rich breath.

The musky sent of woodsmoke—sweeter, though, like incense—was faint, but unmistakable. It smelled of warmth and safety, like the hearth beside a crackling fire, one you can always count on being lit.

The smell of singed Pinyon tickled my soul and wrapped itself protectively around my shoulders, it warmed my cheeks against the chilly air, it whispered to me of letting go, embracing change, soaking in only what is needed and only as it passes, accepting I may never fully understand anything.

Ever since walking the Arizona Trail, I have sensed Pinyon trees have much to say. They are not silent in the way other trees are; the Pinyon has a story to tell.

These special, hardy little pines may live for over 600 years (can you imagine?) and their persistence and fragrance rarely fails to bring me outside of myself when I am caught up ruminating. They tease me, awaken me, and remind me that in order to come home and find peace, first I must go out.

Home, a state of being, back to baseline, bare-bones, as Pema Chödrön, a buddhist nun and teacher, describes it—a state of not wanting or missing.

Go out so that you can come home to yourself, the Pinyon says. Returning, always returning.

But even as I write this, I find myself itching and fretting, wondering and hoping, despairing and spiraling into the gloom, nearly forgetting the sweet incense of this most wise and precious teacher.

The hamster spins, the cat paces, the fire licks the walls, the kettle screams. My mind is its own, and I, a frequent passenger, find myself flying into yet another storm.

A prayer to my Higher Self:

If I am to be judged by my doing and my liking and my pondering instead of by my being, then let me let it be so. Let me lean into this discomfort as I have leaned into discomfort before. Let me go home to the hearth by the fire, wrapped in the smoke of the Pinyon tree. Let me let myself be.

“Where the Snow Ends” is about my mental health. I would like to acknowledge I feel very lucky to live where I do year round, to have a home at all, to have a partner who loves and supports me, to have a full time job in an office in town (no matter how I struggle with its confines), to have friends who know me and care. I am very grateful.

And none of that alters my history; I have been in treatment for depression and anxiety for much of my adult life. I am a survivor of sexual assault, I am a recovering alcoholic and addict, I have fought my way out of more than one abusive relationship, escaped the modeling industry, and crawled out from under a slew of horrible bosses. And this baggage, no matter how dedicated I am to unpacking it, has weight.

Do not mistake me for someone who does not recognize her privilege. I lead a beautiful life, and even at its darkest, it still remains lighter than most.