Karen Nilsen

The Taoism of Snow

When I was in high school, my debate teacher Mr. Yutzy read poems to us every week.  One day he read Wallace Steven’s “The Snow Man,” which has been my favorite poem ever since.  At that time, I had a vague notion that Taoism was an eastern philosophy that involved Buddha somehow.  Certainly I didn’t make the connection then that appreciating the quiet cold of the pristine woods in winter was Taoist, that this poem is a Taoist poem.  I just knew I loved it, how the words so perfectly captured one of a thousand moments from my lonely childhood in the snowy woods of northeastern Minnesota.

It snowed almost a foot here for the second time this winter, something that hasn’t happened before in the twenty years I’ve lived in North Carolina.  The practical adult in me curses the snow when my car gets stuck, when the electricity goes out, when nature halts my puny human plans.  However, the practical adult me is but one of dozens of cloaks I don in my interactions with the outside world.  It’s not the real me.  The real me is wordless, the me who loves this poem, the me who loves the snow, the me who dwells outside of time and with the eternal.  The me who hijacked my fingers and posted the following on Facebook:  “After a tough week, the last thing I wanted was snow to get stuck in. But I took a night-time trudge tonight, and it lifted my spirits so much that I had to post. The transcendent hush of beauty–even with clouds covering the moon and stars, the snow made its own light, and I could see where I was going. I felt 9 years old again, listening to the crystalized hum of thousands of tiny icy flakes falling at once.”

Looking at the snow, I believe that Buddha must have stood in some woods in winter for awhile, the hush of falling snow all around.  It’s enough to make anyone a Taoist.