A Walk in Wisconsin

20 December, 2005

We left the dry warmth of Phoenix yesterday for the moist cold of the upper Midwest. A perpetual cloud of flurries has been falling since we landed in Minneapolis and drove to the small farming community of Colfax, Wisconsin. As I left for my walk through the farmlands of western Wisconsin, my Mexican hoodie quickly collected an assortment of the delicate, six-pointed flakes, as if we adorn me with real winter.

The land is flat here. But the level surface of soil serves a deeper fecundity rather than a bland sterility. Though the smooth surface of the land now appears uniform and blank, whispers of life echo all around. Single farmhouses, bastions of warmth under the grey blanket of cold hold lives waiting within, waiting for the inevitable turn of green. Rows of corn skeletons stand in broken poses, their pale brown spines defying the seasonal rigor mortis with the pride of promise for another year’s life to come. Stands of conifers shudder in the breeze, their defiant green tassels serving as festal fringes on the world’s robe of white.

There is life here. It waits patiently for winter to have its season, for the cold to snap and the chill to settle in, knowing even as the days grow shorter that they must grow longer again. Spring will come once more, and life will arise out of the wintery void, creation again from nothing. Unlike the Antarctic barrenness, which lies frozen under an endless frigidity, this wilderness has an unassuming expectancy.

It is the perfect place to remember Christmas.