Light in the Darkest of Nights

Winter is coming. I can smell it on the breeze. The clouds waft over me and I look up as they come. They come bearing gifts, spreading the news of something greater. They come, marking off the darkest time of year, illuminating it with their gifts, lighting up the night.

The sun shone there once. It shone in the sky bringing light to the darkness. It illuminated the forest I live in, so the animals would not stumble. It showed the paths of the forest, and the moose wandered without fear. The moose saw the rocks ahead, the moose saw the lynx, the moose saw the other deer in the distance. But darkness encroached.

Darkness closed in and the animals began to fear. They feared for their lives because they could not see. They looked down the path, but it was hidden. They wandered from here to there, from the forest to the grasslands and back. They burrowed deep in their homes where no one could find them. They hid themselves away, and there I heard them whispering...

They whispered of the coming darkness. They felt the darkness in their souls. They felt the darkness and remembered the light. The chipmunk whispered to her children, “There was a light, and now it is gone, but it will come again.”

It will come again.

We all wait for the darkness to pass. We know spring will come. We know there will be better days. We know this is not the end, but it is so dark.

We continue on, pushing into the fading light and look to the sky. Where will our help come from?

If we go up to the mountains, darkness is there, if we make our bed in the depths, the darkness is there, if we rise with the morning sun and settle on the far side of the earth, even there the darkness finds us. The whole of the earth is dark, and we remain.

We, as trees of the forest, stand. We cannot wander. We guard. We do our best to ward off the darkness, but our leaves have gone. They have gone and we are stripped, unable to shield the inhabitants of our forest. And the darkness creeps in.

The months pass by and the darkness increases. But then I catch a scent on the wind. The wind brings the scent of the coming light and we sing out. The wind catches our branches and we dance, dancing with the wind, dancing with each other. The time is near.

We sing to the animals. We tell them the news and watch them peek from their dens. Their heads come forth and we tell them the news. Light is coming.

And then the clouds cover the sky. While once the moon had refracted her light into the forest, now I live in utter darkness. The light is cut off from the sky, the light is cut off from the villages, but the flakes begin to fall.

They come singly, they come in pairs, they come as an army.

They build up around my base and pile on my branches. I hold them gently, not wishing to lose a single one, and they gather.

The snow piles through the night; it piles though the day. It comes now and we watch. We watch the snow come, but the stars cannot see it. They only see the back of the clouds. The stars watch the clouds cover the face of my forest and they watch them leave, little understanding how the floor changed so drastically.

Yesterday, I lived in a forest covered with rotting leaves. Today I live in a forest covered with snow. All that had been dirty and stained is covered, only the clean white of winter remains. It covers us, blanketing our blemishes and covering the scars of the earth. It covers us and reflects the light back into the sky. Every drop of light shimmers on the forest floor, illuminating the darkened sky.