The blizzard and the willow

During the blizzard on Saturday afternoon, my husband and son started pulling on jackets and acting as though they were going to go outside.

"I'd better go with you," I said. "I am supposed to go out to the fields."

"I don't think you're going to get to the fields," my husband said. He was right. Standing on the deck felt like enough of a wilderness experience to me. The snow was falling hard, and each flake made a quiet, sharp sound as it hit the hood of my jacket. The wind was so cold that it hurt bits of bare skin around my eyes that I had not been able to cover up. It rushed between our parked vehicles and made huge snowdrifts in front of our cars and trucks. White plumes came whistling off the peak of each drift.

My son crouched down and busily started digging paths through the snow. He was joyfully engrossed, and eventually headed out for his fort behind the garage, but we called him back because we did not want him to disappear from our sight. As a child I used to be able to entertain myself like that outside, but it does not come as easily to me now, and so I busied myself carrying boxes into the house from one of our cars. Like my son, I wanted to be doing something purposeful while I spent more time outside.

Carrying those boxes was tough. I had to lift up my legs high to trudge through the deep snow, and the wind had turned deadly cold. It hissed ominously through the trees to my north. With the last box in my hands, I thought disapprovingly, "This is really overdone. This clearly goes beyond the limits of good taste.” Right away, I was shocked by my arrogance. It doesn't seem right to take a superior attitude with a blizzard.

At that point, I felt what I can best describe as a change in pressure just to the east. Instinctively, I looked in that direction and saw the huge weeping willow tree that stands just outside my kitchen window. I waited there with a box in my arms, and I understood that I was being asked go to that tree. After setting the last box inside, I trudged around the house and found a place for myself just inside the fringes of the willow's swinging branches.

I have wanted to feel a connection with this enormous tree since we moved to this house a year and a half ago. Late in the summer, I allowed the power company to remove some of the willow's branches, and I felt uneasy with the tree for months. Throughout the fall, I talked to it, stood with it, and even rested with my arms wrapped halfway around its trunk, but I only felt anger and shame. Not knowing whether this was coming from me or coming from the tree, I finally asked a friend to drive out from Minneapolis and stand beside it in with me. This friend of mine has a very loving heart and has been willing to stand by trees with me before. On the couple of occasions, I have experienced a very clear feeling that the trees appreciate her presence. I appreciate it too.

On the day my friend came, I had a migraine, and so she stood outside alone. She eventually came back into my living room and reported that although she does not often experience these things, she felt a special warmth at the end of her time with the willow. A couple of days later, my attention was drawn by the sound of the wind in the leaves of the willow, and as I looked up into its branches, I felt a wildness and a powerful pull from the ground to the sky. It was magnificent. I believed that the tree was speaking to me in its way.

Standing beneath the willow in the blizzard, I heard an intimacy between the wildness of the tree and the wildness of the blizzard. The storm was not a stranger but a relative, and something of it would remain with the tree long after the snow passed. I believe the tree wanted me to understand this. I stood listening to the sound of the ice flakes and wind hitting dry leaves that still cling to the yellow willow whips. I noticed the snow drift near my house, evidence that the tree had slowed the North wind before it hit my home. Before I was satisfied that I had heard everything that I was meant to hear, I trudged back through the house and went inside.

My husband greeted me as I peeled off my jacket. “I was worried about you!" he exclaimed. “Did you go to the fields?”