Snowpack Sinkholes

 The late winter snow pack is quite deep in the forest.  In the places where people have walked or skied frequently, it is also quite solid.  However, the warm March sun is having an unsettling effect on the snow.  What feels like solid ground under my feet suddenly gives way and I am mid-shin deep in a snow sinkhole.  This sudden descent of one foot sends a jarring wave of force through my legs and spine which gets trapped in the areas where I am already a bit tight, my low back and my neck.  It is a bit like getting a whip lash when a moving car suddenly stops and the force of forward motion whips through the body and gets stuck in tight areas, like the neck.

It didn’t take too many snow sinkholes for me to start feeling pain in my low back and a mild headache coming from my neck.  The early part of the trail had been quite solid and so I was now quite a ways away from the parking lot.  It didn’t take too long for me to start feeling irritable and cranky and strangely sad.  I leaned into the emotion.  What was it exactly?  What was this sadness?

The sadness felt very similar to the lingering emotions of having things open up and then close down as the pandemic rating fluctuates like the spring thermometer.  The sadness felt like the disappointment of not being able to visit my father or talk to him on the phone while his nursing home was in outbreak.  The sadness of not knowing if I would ever see him again.  It felt like the sadness of not being able to make social plans for the future.

After about twenty minutes of this sudden dropping of one foot I felt like crying or simply lying in the snow and giving up.  I felt angry that I found myself in this position and I wanted to lash out.  But at what?  At whom?  It felt like my reactions to this very common spring problem were over-reactions.  And so, I got curious about them.

I thought about something that I had recently read about refugees, people who found themselves in a new place where they had never wanted to go.  People who had landed somewhere else in their quest to stay alive.  I had read that it is hard for them to trust that life will be good again, to have hope in the future.  My inability to trust the ground or snow that I was walking on to support me felt a little like that.  I felt like giving up.

It occurred to me that people all over the world are feeling like they can’t trust the future, that they can’t trust what they used to take for granted as solid ground.  Each new disappointment, each new restriction feels jarring and it gets stuck wherever we are already tight, wherever our fear is already being held.  I have observed people getting angry over seemingly small things and people wanting to give up, going flat and just waiting.

In many countries, the citizens don’t welcome refugees.  Perhaps they tell themselves that these people are to blame for their circumstances.  I wonder as the whole world has been thrust into a new world that they feel they didn’t choose, if we can have more empathy for refugees.  If we can realize that refugees who build new lives are in fact our role models, our teachers?

Anyone who walks in the Canadian woods year-round could tell you that at some point the snow pack becomes unstable and that snow that has not been packed down by machines or people might not support your weight.  It should come as no surprise.  And yet each misstep felt like a betrayal of sorts.  Perhaps, I had put my faith in the wrong place, perhaps I had wrongly expected solidity from loosely packed snow.  Perhaps, we have put our faith in industrialization, urbanization and the market economy and are now realizing that they won’t sustain us, they won’t hold us up.

It seems that we need to find other things to rely on.  Ideas and knowledge that will sustain us and hold our weight.  Perhaps we need to walk more lightly on the Earth and ask less of her.  Perhaps we can learn from Indigenous knowledge on how to do this.  Lying down in the snow and giving up will only lead to one chilling outcome. 

Back in the forest, I walked more slowly so the jarring when it occurred was well, less jarring.  I tried to find solid areas on the trail and I persevered, knowing that it would end eventually.  Once at home, I put a hot pack on my back and rested so that my back and neck could relax and soften.  Taking care of ourselves is one way to heal from all the jarring.  Finding ways to relax and soften, to dare I say it, have a little fun and laugh.  And, realizing that we are not in this alone.  There are many others who are feeling the same way, having a kind of refugee experience.  We could have empathy for each other and allow this to draw us closer, to remember our connections.

In a few weeks, the snow will be gone and then there will be puddles and mud which can be slippery.  I will still have to walk carefully, paying attention and listening with my feet.  I will still have to be careful when I go to work, when I go into a store and when I meet people walking outside.  There is a certain tension that goes along with all of these things, with living in a new world that we didn’t choose.  It takes courage to persevere and to keep creating.  It takes compassion to recognize how we are feeling, how others are feeling and to care for ourselves.  And it takes community to encourage and care for each other along the way especially with all the jarring.  These are qualities well worth developing.  They will stand us in good stead in the future.  They will help us to build resilience for the snow will fall again and thaw again.  Some of the story will be old but how we deal with it could be new.