In a white forest, the branches of the timbers were heavy and drooping with crystalline cold. It wasn't too deep around the low log cabin in the clearing, on the edge of the frosted woods, but I knew that to walk up and over the small hill in front of me would mean walking into drifts ten feet tall. It also meant we were alone.
Walking away from the winter landscape, out of the preternaturally bright sky, my back to, but my ears hearing, the ominous thuuungg of branches and treetops disgorging their burdens of sharp, frozen snow into the pillow of same on the forest floor, into the cabin go I.
The blazing sky is captured inside, however, in the demesne of his eyes which watch me come near. I search for pain there, never ever finding it despite the broken body involved. He has healed so well in this place, the south-facing, protected cove. They thought I was foolish to winter here, that he could die so far away from medical care. They promised to check on us as often as the weather allowed. I hoped it would continue to keep them away.
I shed my clothes as I walk softly towards him, where he has hung himself up on the posts from the wall, under his arms so that he can sit up with a snapped spine and not put pressure on the injury, allowing the weight of his hips and legs to be suspended. Naked, I slip into the bed that takes up most of the floor space in the squat cabin. This is where at least three months of our lives is going to be spent, it might as well be spacious.
He smells like smoke and agony. Mingled in his long, thick, blond hair it is the scent of pitch, of a proud fir fractured by lightening. It had happened that fast, the tree had fallen and snapped his six foot nine inch frame in half, backwards, split his skull completely open and left him in an slow coma of recovery for three months. When he awoke and it was the first day of fall, he looked around at the hospital and without questions asked me to take him out of it.
He will be walking soon, now that it is deep winter. He eyes the snowshoes by the sturdy door and I can feel his muscle memory working out the motions as his body flexes and shifts against mine. I think about oatmeal with dried berries, the comfrey compress to be applied later, of the warm water washcloth baths we will take tonight, and where the snow-frozen meat was boxed behind the cabin, all as I absently but fluently massage his hips and inflamed sciatic nerve. The motions of his body change subtly and before long we are engaged in the strongest painkilling endorphin release available.
For two years I visited this place. They, we, were always there. I began to be thankful there was this time in space, a place, a loop, of such love and comfort, pain and healing, that I could visit. I could slip into this vision which always came to me unbidden- it came to me, washed over me and no matter what I was doing, the real world became like activity in a movie theater, rustling around me as I couldn't help but focus on the huge projection in front of my face. After a while, the snow bound visits slowed and then ceased all together.
I created a place when I was older, in the 'real world', where I could practice some of those motions from the snow forest. I could bring pain relief through touch to those in need, though it never coalesced into sexual union. I practiced herbalism, from topical comfrey to my own pain-killing, sleep-inducing, cough-suppressing draught on my friends, roommates and neighbors. And I fed them all, around 17 people at any given time. I could step out my back door with a plate of food and be able to pass it off to some hungry wildland firefighter or skinny kid too busy making Food not Bombs to feed themselves. It was one of the former, a firefighter that I presented a plate to one day, who called out after me as I went back to my kitchen to dish up some more for someone else, "You are a goddess!"
When I turned to look for the embodiment of the voice- I hadn't paid attention to whom I was serving- simply filled empty hands- all I could see were long, long legs sticking out of a corner shadow, and as I gave a toothy grin and stepped back in to my house, the impression of eyes the colour of a pale blue sky glimpsed through a snow storm brought me to a momentary stand still, but the smell of cooking food on the stove propelled me to leave the question forming in my mind for another time.
The impressionist revealed himself to me in the following days, showing up in my kitchen to scrape my breadboard or read to me while I cooked, or I would find him sitting on my porch in the mornings with cups of coffee and his boar bristle hairbrush, with which I couldn't resist combing out his thick, long blond hair, showing him how to care for it by brushing from the bottom up. He was 17 years older than I, today is his only daughter's 17th birthday, and he was 17 years old the summer in Wyoming when a tree had fallen on him, splitting his skull, breaking his back and putting him into a coma for three months. He had been six foot nine, now was just around six foot six, the tree having squashed his lower spine. I was told this tale after finding a deep scar on the top of his head that would weep a tiny amount of clear fluid, every day, even after 22 years.
He had healed, he told me, laying with his head in my lap one afternoon as I gave my voice a break from reading the bible out loud- it being something neither of us had ever read- while wintering in a cabin that some friends had donated to his recovery process. The couple took care of him, and by the time winter had set fully in they would accompany him on his short snowshoeing treks around the meadow, never bringing up that he wasn't supposed to be alive at all, let alone able to walk. He had spent many days alone there, as his caretakers had to work, and often, he said, envisioned an angel of healing attending to him in those lonely, quiet days. I sat silent, breathing in the faint smell of sap and smoke drifting from his body.
I have dreams, sleeping next to him over the next two years.
...We are in a room with a soft bed high up near the ceiling. He is already on the bed, but I have to climb a tall tree to get there. It is very hard. After a while of watching me struggle he reaches down and picks me up...
...We are at a lake at night. I notice the full moon is being eclipsed and that the stars are down under the tree canopy. I have to dive down to the bottom of a lake to retrieve things and a black woman helps me under by pushing on my feet...
...I'm in a converted school bus decked out by 'Nam vets. It's got beds, kitchen, a loft, the works! One guy shows me how to roll a joint on the flat instep of his boot, and tells me that my love can travel around like particles of sunlight
...It is snowing and the world is white. A girl, tall, pale, comes out of the forest behind me. She is going to a shooting contest. She shows me her guns and informs me that it is very hard to make bullets by hand. I see him in her, like they are twins, and am happy...
...We are standing along a coastline with a view of an island that is heavily treed with cedars. There's a monster there, 15 feet tall with black hair and brown fur, and he's trying to get off the island! We go further along the coastline where we are able to see the monster fell a *huge* cedar tree, and I begin to cry as he tells me the name of the beast is Hu-wa-wa...
...Driving in a car with someone and we get pulled over. They put us in the cop car and leave us there for a long time. Somehow I get the car spinning in circles. When it finally stops, they take me to a holding room, only after a while I realise it's a 'loony bin'. He is there, and he tries to teach me a game with lots of cards- nice cards, very ornate. You have to lie down many cards, like rummy or a tarot spread I saw once... There are cards I don't know but he has a book to look them up in- Takalthoth we look up, to see what the suit is. I try to get him to leave with me, but he says he's sold his soul to the Takalthoth card and can't go. I faint. Then I am free and escape to a waterfall. I lay down in it and look over. It is a long way down, but I go over head first. In the pool at the bottom a black woman with a baby on her back greets me...
...In the snow, someone whispers to me that his "other name is Frost..."
...vitamin C, echinacea pills and tea for him, he is very sick...
The last dream happened exactly one year to the day before he died, looking at the full moon on a Friday night. For five more years, I dream of him frequently. I am always so happy to see him, he holds me and lets me cry for a minute, then an adventure starts. We scare ghosts and go camping with his old, fat dog, fight armies of mechanical animals, and aliens on different planets. In real life, I cut 25 inches from my hair and after that I don't dream him again for many months. I worry perhaps he doesn't recognise me, but really I feel that he is simply... busy. I took the time he was absent from my dreams and life to think of all the things he taught to me, directly or indirectly. He introduced Goddess to me, the mother of all, the world's energy, the fickle and passionate love that always drives, but never wears on, you. He taught me to dance like no one was watching. He taught me I was trustworthy, and how to use that trust to make decisions. He helped me to understand a balanced man was one who embraced the feminine in himself, who wasn't afraid to be soft and caring to his family, or to cry when the need arose, who felt no shame in needing at all. He also showed me how to respect myself, that a man never uses his strength for intimidation in the home, that with love is the best way to get anything done. One thing he tried to show me that I could never do as well as he, was watch. In the shadows, guarded and still, he would stand for ages, watching people move about the neighborhood, judging who was safe and who he should step out in front of, his size and icy eyes usually enough to keep them from coming near ever again. He watched the weather change and the sun move, he watched me watch him. I learned to look for him in the shadows of trees, in a dark space between buildings, if he was ever absent for too long. He would always be around, watching.
As he lay dying, I remember his brother asking me what were the beliefs of the dying man, so they might be honoured. I said he believes in the Goddess, in Sophia the mother. His brother laughed and said, "The Goddess is *dead*, man." I spit back at him without knowing what or why, "She's not dead, she's pissed off and calling back her best soldiers!" This I still believe to be true.
A year and a half ago, I had what has thus far, been my final dream of him.
...There is a logging road, and I take a walk down it. It leads up into a forested hillside in the process of being harvested. I see this huge log being moved down the hill, it's as wide as two men standing on each others shoulders, then I see it is loose from its chains. From my perspective I can tell it won't hit me, but it comes close, crashing to a stop a couple feet away, in front of a huge shop I just now notice, with guys standing outside of it. One comes up behind me and teases, "You mustn't ever freeze like that, let your legs get all watery, it'll get you killed." I turn and look up at the speaker, to see that it looks just like him, or as he would've at 17. He strides away on long legs up the road the log came down, and I hurry after, saying that I knew it wasn't going to hit me! I have to repeat myself a few times and I'm not sure he is even aware of me, that I'll get to talk to him, but he finally notices me again. I ask him his name and when he tells me the same one I knew him by, I know it's him, us, in a different life, a different time. Another chance. I ask before I touch his hair and he lets me, saying, "It's all about how you brush it, from the bottom up!" and that he takes "whore hair vitamins" and I laugh at that and he is pleased. It is their lunchtime, and in the shop he moves with such quick ease I can't keep up with him. The other guys watch us, me, amused. I get embarrassed and go out the front door, thinking to leave, but he knows right where I am. We go back up the hill and suddenly he seems angry with me, confused, and I almost lose him as I tell him his fate in life, my real life. "Don't you know it's true? You know you feel it," I ask, and he does, and acquiesces. He listens to me tell him this is another time, and that I love him and we can live in this life even when I wake up. In this life he is different, he has no broken back, is a logger not a tree planter, his teeth were straightened as boy, and I get him young again. I let him go back to work and as I walk back down the road, I hear wolves howling in the forest above.
Three months later, as I am reading the The Book of Enoch for the first time, I come across a reference to the angel of frost. "The spirit likewise of the sea is potent and strong; and as a strong power causes it to ebb, so it is driven forwards, and scattered against the mountains of the earth. The spirit of the frost has its angel; in the spirit of hail there is a good angel; the spirit of snow ceases in its strength, and a solitary spirit is in it, which ascends from it like vapour."
