Snow Flowers

I stood at the trailhead. The pebbly trail gave way to wooden planks and a boardwalk, wooden steps down to the field. The field lay stretched out before me in the distance and was full of wildflowers. I wanted to get a hike in. It was unseasonably warm for the middle of March and there was a warm front that was soon to give way to heavy snowfall. The wildflowers had begun to reveal themselves, blooming, and I hated to think of them stuck under inches or feet of snow and ice.

I took the first step onto the trail. I was the only one who was hiking in the Stakes National Forest on Traditional Trail today. Or at least, I was the only one around that I could see.

Normally I would pass other hikers on the trail but today everyone was making last minute preparations for the upcoming snowstorm that was set to dump at least nine inches of snow on the area. But I had to see the wildflowers before the snow came. They had been fooled by the warm weather into bursting forth and it seemed utterly tragic to think they might die.

A March snowstorm in the area was rare but stranger things had happened. Extreme weather events were becoming more common, and no one could often even predict the path of destruction or difficulty that the storm would take. Instead giving frenzied possibilities that everyone would heed as if it were the end of days.

I moved down the trail and cast a curious glance up at the sky that was still bright and sunny. But in the distance, far off beyond the furthest mountain range, I could see a choppy cloudy milk white sky that looked a bit ominous. I was not worried. I was feeling nostalgic and reckless, a terrible combination, I know.

My boyfriend of four years, Roe, had dumped me just a few weeks before. I was still in a strange shock when I thought about it. I was trying to process the breakup, but my mind would not allow me to accept it, which I knew was the fastest way to move forward and cause myself less pain.

I still could not believe it. Not really. Roe had given me a list of reasons for the breakup and none of them seemed legitimate to me.

I love the man with all my heart and thought we were doing so well together the past four years. I have often heard the term blindsided and I suppose that that is how it felt for me at the moment when he made his proclamation regarding the dissolution of our perfect union. But of course, it was not perfect. And now I knew that no matter how I deluded myself with rose colored memories that stabbed at my heart like little needles administering some sort of weird amphetamine to my weary soul.

All the reasons Roe gave me for our inevitable end were boilerplate and insufficient, but I made a point not to demand answers that would satisfy me. And I made a point not to beg him for anything—better reasons included. I still had my pride and my self respect.

In the wee hours of the morning when I was lying in bed wide awake and trying to decipher the meaning of his farewell message, I felt anything but pride and self respect. Sharp and cunning shame and expanding embarrassment, a nagging sense of damnation, pervasive doom clouding my thinking and a trippy unmoored sense of losing control, losing hope, losing him, losing myself. A horrible disassociation with my heart and mind and like my body and mind were disembodied pieces of some broken thing.

Roe moved out of the apartment we shared as soon as he broke the news to me. I watched him pack up his things and felt like I had been punched or pushed suddenly from a high ledge.

But I could not feel that way. I doubted my new reality. Roe is the most nonviolent person I know. I tried not to think about it as a violence perpetrated against me. Instead, I thought of it as a transition or a new beginning, a transmutation. I thought of myself as a solitary element being changed into another element. A stoic and hearty element then radioactive decay, nuclear bombardment, or a similar process. Or that I was starting as one species, namely sad girl, and converted into another species— educated girl. For surely I was learning how to be something else entirely now.

I continued down the trail as it sloped downhill and then evened out and then turned into a wooded grove of oaks and poplars and stands of birch that contrasted nicely with the dark leaves and the darkness beyond the tangles of thickets on either side. I stepped deliberately, one foot in front of the other and encouraged myself, that’s it. You know how to walk.

Throughout the past few weeks, I had been eerily silent and preternaturally calm. I felt the chaos of my unhinged emotions ebbing and flowing but at a distant and safe remove. I knew they were there and would be when I was ready to deal with them.

But for now, I was stunned into submissive silence and wounded in a way that hurt me to consider. My silence and calm were respectful and stoic. I had become a statue of my former self. Once animated, enthusiastic, positive, and outgoing…now I was an indoor houseplant, drooping and dehydrated. Or hewn from marble and cool to the touch. Now I was a version of myself that I did not know had ever existed. And this unfamiliar version of myself was sadly someone who I had no desire to ever meet.

I would not let the shock give way to resentment or regret. I was adamant about that. I was also aware of every time I thought about just giving Roe his space and holding out a hope that he would change his mind or that he had made a mistake and would soon realize it. But that part of me that survives alone till the end of time made sure to admonish my pathetic dreams and fantasy scenes and dolled out a measure of strict truth about the situation, mean logic, and self preservation disguised as brutality.

Even if he changes his mind and says he made a mistake, it will be too late. He made his choice. He did not choose me. I am a forever person. I am the one who stays. Roe left. He always did have a the-grass-is-always-greener mentality, didn’t he?

My thoughts on the matter wavered between quiet resignations and robust declarations.

I was nobody’s fool. I tried not to let my mind spiral into the what if categories and I tried desperately not to fill myself up with what felt like my own personal conspiracy theory adaptations.

I withdrew from society. I did not seek advice from well meaning friends. Unless he told them, I was too ashamed to. Some of them knew. But everyone was just living their lives. It was my unique and awful soap opera drama. My own pain.

The path twisted through the pines, and I smelled the fresh earth and the pine needles that lay strewn about the patches of tucked away land on either side of the trail. I had to step carefully on flat stones as I made my way across a creek bed that would be a river after the rains. The toe of my sneaker got wet.

I jumped the rest of the way across to the other side and felt like a little kid landing in a pile of autumn leaves.

The narrow dirt trail went on for quite a while through the dark woods. The shy sunlight shone down through the trees and lit shadows of leaves across the path.

When at last the field of early wildflowers came into view, I was able to breathe deeply and feel a sense of peace.

My peaceful feeling was short lived because then I thought about Roe and how much I loved him and how happy we had been.

It was important for me to stop the madness of these thoughts as I was only serving to torture myself further. I devised a plan. I would think of things that made me happy. A list of happy things as exhaustive as a dictionary. And I smiled when I thought that my list of happy things would be infinitely better than the list of reasons I had been given as to why it no longer worked.

Don’t be bitter about this. He can go his own way.

My thoughts were trying to help me see the way forward. I was still in shock and that seeing through the darkness with the cold grip of realities severity was on the horizon for me.

Not necessarily. Tell me your list of happy things.

I could deeply appreciate that my own thoughts were trying to help me process the shock and grief and that my epic sadness was just beginning but that I could make it easier somehow.

I stepped down the sloping dirt trail that soon became a boardwalk and my footsteps tapped softly as I walked out over the middle of the field. I stood still in the middle of the field and took in the sight of the field full of tall grass and wildflowers peeking out. Each flower caught the light and sparkled.

The wildflowers were magnificent. I was surrounded by bright life.

The trail through the field continued for half a mile until a dirt trail began that veered right sharply up a rocky hillside of switchbacks and shaded woods.

The sky was sunny still but the sun was faint. The clouds had thickened and accumulated and were coming from behind the distant mountains. I wanted to make it up to the summit where there was a large grey rock I could sit on that looked out over the valley.

Plaid shirts.

Nature walks.

Wild blueberries.

I stopped to take a sip of my water bottle and looked behind me. There were still no other hikers on the trail. Did everyone know something that I did not know? Well, obviously. I thought again of Roe, now heartsick. Like a toxic blackness was filling my otherwise healthy heart.

It was a mistake to come here. It is only making me miss him more.

Why? You love this trail. You wanted to see the wildflowers before they die.

Because I used to come here with Roe. He loves this trail, too.

My mind and my thoughts were becoming like two sides of the same coin. I was sentimental, sensitive, raw. I was logical, determined, and honest.

I could feel myself splitting in half with the division and what I thought I knew now boiling down to my mercurial feelings. My desperate and despondent moods.

I just wanted to be with him.

Lightning in a rainstorm.

City lights.

Neon signs.

Farms.

Chickens.

My appetite had diminished since the breakup, but I was ravenous enough that what made me happy was a lot of carbs and dairy.

Chocolate chip cookies.

Fresh bread.

Garlic bread.

Homemade pasta.

Cold ice cream

Hot coffee

Gnocchi.

Ever since the breakup I had resisted the urge to reach out to Roe with questions or comments. Now I was always seeing something I knew he would like.

Had I thought about him enough when we were together?

Once saw a cool green and black graffiti tag on the side of a dilapidated brick wall that said ROW (I love synchronicity). The image of the graffiti I had sent to him.

He responded: wow, cool. They spelled my name wrong!

But there were so many times I had not gone through with sending the things that I thought or knew he would appreciate. I had been busy or I had not wanted to annoy him or blow up his phone with content. He was a minimalist when it came to text messaging. I knew this about him and that is why I held off on sending the images or messages.

Sometimes I thought, just tell him about it later.

And sometimes I would forget about it and by the time I remembered, it would seem silly and inconsequential. I would file it away in the folder of my mind for miscellaneous and random things.

But now, as I walked with purpose along the dirt trail, I felt a sad longing for the good old days and then wondered if the good old days had been a figment of my imagination.

We were happy. Yes, we were. We had many good years, good times. It was more good than bad. So then why?

I tried to stop myself from asking why. I knew why. I knew enough about why, anyway. But I could not stop myself from thinking I should have done more. I could have sent him the messages when I still had the chance. Now it would seem pathetic and tone deaf. There was an aching pain in my chest, and I tried not to feel regretful or angry. I could not feel angry. I was still too stuck in a fragile raw shocked mode.

I climbed up the switchbacks.

Teddy bears.

Treehouses.

Drawing in sketchbooks.

Picking up seashells at the beach.

Watching the sunrise.

I tried not to incorporate Roe into my list of happy things. We liked so much of the same things. None of this made any sense.

The trail became steep and narrow, and I had to step over rocks in the path and and climb as I neared the top of the trail and reached the summit. I did not realize how angry I was until I reached the last leg of the switchbacks. My feet were pounding into the trail and I was breathing hard. Expending the energy that was simmering inside me. I told myself do not be angry.

Do not be bitter.

It is those qualities inside of you that he is running away from.

But I was angry. And I was bitter. Oh, I was trying not to be. It was good to be in the fresh air and to work up a sweat and to breathe deeply. My goal of reaching the summit became the only thought in my head after a while.

My strong legs and my strong heart will take me there.

I neared the top of the summit, and the woods fell away and I emerged into an open space that snaked upwards along many large rocks that jutted out from the edge of the narrow mountain top.

The trail disappeared and I climbed up over large grey rocks and then the trail reappeared and I hugged the side of the mountain. To my right was a wall of rocks and scraggly trees growing up through the crags and clefts in the rocks. To my left were rocks and the cliff side and beyond that the jagged purple mountains in the distance all around and the sweeping valley below. I could see the wildflower field and the tall grasses blowing in the new breeze.

I climbed to the top of the mountain and sat on the big grey rock for a while. The clouds were rolling in but I didn’t care. An electrified dangerous energy buzzed through me. I did care but I was not worried about anything. What I was worried about, I had lost all control over.

Now I was here, alone.

I sat at the top of the traditional on crest rock and looked out at the mountains and the valley below and noticed the weather changing.

I told myself to let him go.

The cold front was moving in, and it woke me up. The air now changed and different than it had been. I got up.

I moved back down the trail. Going downhill, the force of motion and gravity pushed me forward.

The car was parked at the high overlook way above the trail head, and I had to climb many small stone steps to get there.

I put the heat on full blast and pulled on my warm fuzzy hat and gloves and sat in the parking lot. Mine was the only car except for a fleet of snowplow vehicles parked on the other side.

Before I drove away and headed back home to be with myself alone again, I sat in the car in the silence and watched as the snow began to fall from the milk white sky in big powdery snowflakes and quickly began to accumulate as white outlines sticking to the dark land.

The optimism of flowers.