By Larry Berz
As you already know, readers, I walk a lot. Since logging some 600 miles on the local roadways, river trailways, and snowy streetsides to promote New Frontier long-distance expeditionary hiking, I might just yield to temptation to retire and closet and deposit my Merrell shoes permanently.
I can reassure you that the thought crossed my mind. But nay! I still lace up and expose myself so to speak to the buffeting forces called Winter. Why? Overall, two reasons crop up in my mind.
First, I don’t want to die — yet. Well, that may sound obvious and utterly desirable, but I see no value in simply conforming and submitting to the inevitable disintegration of sharp mental and physical being. Second, I am burning with the drive to set a good example to an Aroostook community who hungers for signs of courage, excellence, and determination.
Furthermore, the long-distance odyssey creates a zone of possibility to experience an unusual insight or sound, an unusual thought or visual phenomena, a life-changing affirmation or a heart-rending passion not accorded to the everyday.
Enter — the snowshoe! The sublime stride of powdered pressure against the utter silence of an Aroostook County woodland uplifts anyone for utmost encounter. Trees monumentally speak against a blue/black skydrop — heavily laden with snow dressing — ornamented with the diamond cold starlight that speak volumes to my inner man.
‘Tis the season for wonder as defined by Webster’s: “the quality of exciting amazed admiration” or “a rapt attention or astonishment at something awesomely mysterious or new to one’s experience.” Now that’s the kind of Christmas greeting that never disappoints. I offer one unmistakable grabber, one sincere snapper this holiday early evening. In the mid-bleak winter, Southwestern skies blaze with an incomparable jewel of starlight, the planet Venus. An evening star of breathtaking illumination, Venus now magically approaches the planet Earth throughout late December into early January.
Through an optical telescope, the “Wow” factor of a delicate ornamental crescent greets the eye delightedly. Through the telescopic heart, the star faithfully becomes the Star of Christmas, reminding the local lambs that “Star of Wonder, Star of Light, Star of Royal Beauty bright, Westward gleaming, Still preceding — Guides us to that perfect Light.”
Please listen to your heart and find the necessary light to realize, this December, what French novelist Albert Camus stated in awakening that, “in the depth of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.”
Larry Berz of Caribou is director of Easton’s Francis Malcolm Planetarium and astronomy instructor at the Maine School of Science and Mathematics.
