The blank page…
A blank page stares at me empty and white. I stare back casting my gaze out to scan for a sign, something to give me direction or hint at potential. Nothing meets my eye. It’s forbidding terrain. It will not reveal its secrets, but I know there’s something hidden here, something worth pursuing. The blank page is indifferent. It offers no insight, no clue to its mysteries. It does not even tell me what I have learned from experience to be true: begin. Press a key, any key. Scratch a line or dot some ink onto the paper. Do not wait for all the words to arise in thought first. Some may come, but perhaps not. Once in a while they’re the right words, but most of the time they’re the wrong ones. It doesn’t matter. The answers, the shape of things, the journey, and the destination only reveal themselves through pursuit. I must begin and I must persist until the words and the structure of phrases and punctuation and paragraphs become apparent. I do not start because I know what the end will look like (though sometimes I have a good idea). I start because the end will never exist if I don’t begin.
Winter white in the frozen north reaches in 360 degrees to the sky’s edge. It is snow and it is ice. What lies beneath is unknown, buried, muted into shapelessness. What can you see? White land and sky. Where should you go? One direction looks like the next. How do you proceed? Take a step. Stamp your footprint into the white. Mark your beginning. Will it set you in the right direction? Yes. And no. It’s right because it’s a beginning. It’s wrong because you don’t know how it will take you where you are going. You must deal with your own uncertainty, and you will only survive through trial and error. Do not be discouraged if you come back around to that first footprint. When you come back to it you know more, understand more. The footprint suddenly has meaning and context. It’s no longer the only indication of where you are. It tells you where you have been and helps you know where to go next.
Heavy grey clouds obscure the sky, and fluffy white flakes fall around you. Your footprints fill up and vanish. Snow blindness encloses your world to mere feet in front of you. Wait, wait. Let the storm subside. Then, begin again. Start over, but from where you are. Make a new footprint. Seek out to discover what awaits you if you begin again.
A figure emerges, foggy black and silhouetted against the background. Your mind anticipates its significance. A boon, a guide, a threat, a chance. Your approach renders its form into more detail. Austere rock juts up out of the white and slopes the ground to a higher elevation. A mountain. A vantage point. A landmark. You climb. What will you see from its peak? Perhaps a road, a forest, another mountain, a refuge, your own tracks, more voiding white. No matter. You are not alone anymore. There is white and there is you and there is a mountain. Now your journey gains momentum.
The winter and the desert…
Winter hits me like its own distinct geographical region. It transforms the environment dramatically and makes it something different yet particular. Winter brings northern climates into states of bareness, isolation, and starkness. It’s demanding and beautiful. The only comparable geographical region is the desert. Like the desert, winter on first, or even fiftieth, glance looks lifeless and vacant. It stretches so far from you and around you that it feels like it has taken over everything, and because it is so unyielding it can seem limiting to the point of bleak. Climates like these prevent many people from living in or visiting them. I see that as part of their charm. To appreciate the winter or the desert you have to drop into yourself and draw forth a spirit of adventure. These places are rich with wonder, but like a deposit of ore the profound riches are not obvious and you must persist in digging them out.
Magic and the mysterious dwell in sand and snow. You are confronted by the winter and the desert. They ask questions of you without asking. You must transform yourself to know them, and as proficient as you become in understanding them, they will turn on you shifting into something else for you to uncover. Their harshness and unpredictability may seem daunting and cruel, but if you take the chance to adventure into their wilds, their badlands and tundras, you will experience the fantastic, the miraculous, the breathtakingly beautiful. Sunsets like you’ve never imagined, mechanics of life that seem impossible, hidden treasures and forgotten secrets that you will yourself be compelled to obscure. These are far from the only rewards of venturing into such regions. It’s dangerous to travel into the desert and through the winter. Death is a possibility and the conditions make you very aware of it. The trial of deserts and winters will build your skills, your wisdom, your resilience, and your virtues. Like playing a role playing game, watch your talents unlock and amplify as you progress. And with each new talent point you’ll be given new, harder challenges and new, more lavish rewards.
I long for the mystery of the white page, the snow covered planes, and the sun-bleached shifting sands. I recoil from and embrace the discomfort – the heat and the cold, the dry, and the empty, and the dark. I want the adventure, the discovery. I don’t want the hardship, and while I don’t deliberately seek hardship out the risk is worth the reward. The other side of hardship encountered in pursuit of something that matters is the best of what life has to offer. It’s accomplishment, success, freedom, meaning, and fulfillment. And the opportunity is at my doorstep each year when the winter comes.
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