It’s been COLD this winter. In a way that I haven’t experienced in recent years here in Maryland. January brought a big snow storm, snow days from school, and multiple days of temperatures in the teens and low 20s. That’s pretty cold for southern Maryland! The snow took a LONG time to melt, making my dark, early-morning dog walk into a slippery and injury-prone experience. Now it’s mid-February, and sure enough, the snow has shown up again. This second storm mostly melted off quickly, but temperatures dropped again soon thereafter, and it is chilly out there again now. In all this wintry weather, my normal enthusiasm for outdoor adventuring has decreased a bit.
Make no mistake, I am strong believer that nature is beautiful and worth experiencing ANY time of year. I have hiked, skiied, and snowshoed through icy and snowy woods many times with great fervor. (Can I tell you a secret? I didn’t grow up in Maryland. I actually grew up in northwest Montana. So being outside in snow, ice, and frigidity is nothing new for me.) The thing is, I’m not used to it anymore. I don’t experience the long-term cold very often in my Maryland life. I tend to get colder and shiver more now than I did when I was younger. And so it feels burdensome sometimes, without the pull of some kind of very special event or exciting activity, to drag the heavy ski jackets and snow pants out of storage, wear an adequate number of layers and all manner of outdoor winter warmth accessories, lace up my waterproof boots, and force myself outside. I’ll do it for my kiddos – I mean, they’re growing up and there are only so many fun play days in the snow left! But when the snow has receded to icy mud, tromping around by myself in the freezing cold just . . . sounds less appealing than it used to.
So, I’ll admit that I hadn’t made it out for a decent hike in many weeks when I finally decided that I could no longer stand the deprivation of nature and fresh air and would have to brave the cold. Not for far or long, mind you. But I needed to get out. So, I went on my first Maryland Micro (and I do mean very “micro”) adventure!
In the spirit of microadventuring, I stayed very close to home. In fact, I walked down a trail into the woods immediately behind my house. (I am very fortunate to live in a house with a back yard that adjoins deeded county conservation land, so the woods are never far away.) I carried a small camp chair and a hot cup of coffee. And I walked through the woods to a small creek that runs behind our house. (My family has done a great deal of playing in and adventuring along this tiny stream throughout the years we’ve lived here. According to Apple Maps, it is called Fowlers Mill Branch, and it runs downstream to the west from some distance east of us, all the way across Southern Maryland Blvd (Rte. 4) and into Hall Creek – a much larger and better known creek that itself runs into the Patuxent River soon thereafter.) The stream was partially frozen over, but a decent contingent of it had melted, and as running water is wont to do, was desperately seeking to break free of its icy cage. I plopped down my chair near the creek bed and sat to watch for a time.
I didn’t know how long I would last there in the cold before my shivering became too uncomfortable to remain. Or how much benefit there was to be gained by sitting alone in the bare winter forest with a mostly-frozen stream. But I began nonetheless, and started by appreciating the silence of the moment and the temporary respite from human and technological intrusion. Before long, once my ears became re-accustomed to the noise of the woods rather than the loudness of my normal human environment, I realized that it wasn’t silent at all. In fact, the stream in front of me made plenty of its own noise as the melted water therein somehow managed to push past the large icy chunks that attempted to trap it.
My attention now focused fully on the creek right in front of my feet, and I became almost immediately transfixed by the water itself. I watched the running melted water, in trapped rivulets and bubbles caught underneath the icy plates. Each bubble fought for its own right to move, to keep moving, to return to and rejoin its intended place – its home. As far as I could see it, that home was first in this little stream. But then (as I might have envisioned on a map), I imagined the bubbles pushing their way to Hall Creek, and then all the way down to the Patuxent River. I was so impressed by these trapped bubbles that refused to be contained by their icy cages and fought, fought, fought to rejoin their mother of moving water that I took a video of it.
If you have a few minutes and could use some meditative time, take a watch. Try to find one of the trapped water bubbles (I was paying particular attention to a large one as I took this video) and watch how hard it pushes to rejoin its home of moving water. How it bends and transforms and changes shape and sometimes breaks off into pieces but never stops moving and pushing until it reaches the melted section of the stream.
Aren’t we just like that water? We get encrusted and caged up – by circumstances, by expectations, by difficult emotions or experiences that we haven’t had time to process in this too-rapidly-moving world, by any number of things imposed from without. Those crusty cages separate us from our own hearts, from our true selves, from our most deeply held values, and from our loved ones. But if we try, when we try (and we know deep down that we must always try), we can find a way back to them. We may have to push, or move, or change shape, or divide and go around (just like the bubbles), but we must keep moving forward toward the things we know we are intended and made for.
These thoughts occupied my head and heart as I picked up my chair and my coffee cup and trudged back up through the crunchy snowy woods to my house. I thought how funny it was that a partially frozen creek had something to say to me today. And I thought about how water is life. In so many different ways. Maybe for everyone, everywhere. But especially here, in my home, in Maryland. I live in southern Maryland, less than 15 minutes from the Chesapeake Bay. The water is an enduring presence in my life. But it’s true everywhere in this state of ours. The whole of Maryland sits within the Chesapeake watershed, and everything from our environment to our history to our food is tied up with that water. Maybe it has even more to tell us than we knew. Perhaps I’ll hear more on my next microadventure.
-Chelsy
Epic Marylanding 