The Darkest Evening of the Year

 

I wrote the following short piece for Fresh Ink, my writers club journal, but I decided to share it here because... it's the Solstice. And why not?

     In “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” Robert Frost describes a reverie he’s had on the night of the December solstice as he stops to watch the snow fall on a neighbor’s woods. It’s a lovely image—the white flakes falling, dusting the trees with winter icing. As his “little horse,” impatient to move on, shakes himself, his harness bells—sleigh bells—jingle. Apart from that, they are in a place so isolated, it’s quiet enough to hear the snow falling. (“The only other sound’s the sweep/of easy wind and downy flake.”)

We love this poem because, the Christmas season being what it is, with its frenetic activity of shopping, wrapping, preparing, cooking, and so forth, we relate to the final lines of the poem: “But I have promises to keep/And miles to go before I sleep/And miles to go before I sleep.”

Until I memorized this poem long ago (along with a freshman English class I was teaching), I didn’t fully appreciate the line that comes before those final lines: “The woods are lovely, dark and deep.” It seems there is a certain reluctance here to push on, get those chores done, those promises kept, get out of the cold and into a warm bed. Why? What drives a man to sit in a sleigh and stare, when he has so much at home compelling him to get moving?

This is what I relate to, the dragging of his feet, the lure of the woods. As much as we would love to remember Frost as the kind, grandfatherly man who wrote of nature and farming, he was a profoundly troubled individual who possessed the requisite tortured soul of many poets. Consider this: His sister spent her last years in a mental institution, as did one of Frost’s daughters. One son died of cholera at the age of four; the other committed suicide when he was thirty-eight. Frost would outlive this son by twenty-three years, which is a long, long time to carry such grief.

Suffice it to say, the poet experienced his share of sadness and depression. What comforted him, we assume from his work, was the beauty and resiliency he observed in nature, the constancy and routine of the seasons’ change.

Many decades ago, when I had recently emerged, battle weary and deeply depressed, from the worst year of my life, two friends stopped by my house and nearly dragged me out to hike with them. I had no hiking boots, only sneakers. It was January, and while the golden California sun was shining, it had snowed in the mountains the night before—which is where they insisted on taking me, up to the nearest mountain, Mt. Baldy, for a long walk up a winding fire road that eventually led to a crystal-clear view of the valley below.

The snow was the brightest white I had ever seen. The trees, warmed by the sun, gave off an aromatic scent of pine you will never find in a cleaning product or deodorizer. And after miles of hiking, endorphins flooding my brain, I was hooked. Here was solace. Here was comfort. The sights, the smells, these two goofball friends who told stories and laughed and kept me moving until I was (finally!) warm, gave me the gift of hiking to achieve balance and perspective, to be reminded that, as nature endures, so will I. The hours we spent were more memorable than I can describe, and I will be grateful for it through the rest of my days.

“The woods are lovely, dark and deep.” During the holiday season, this line will come to me at the oddest times—standing in line at Target, sitting on the floor wrapping gifts, breathing deeply in heavy traffic as I try to remain calm and get to my destination alive. They will draw me out, those woods, and offer me quiet moments of solitary, serene walking in between the frenzied times. And I will remember Frost and his work with much gratitude.