Searching for Winter

As someone who loves snow and warm hats and the orderly changing of seasons, it had been a disappointing winter. I’d seen barely a flake of snow, and daytime temperatures often felt more on par with what you’d expect from a typical April than from any of the winter months. 

Don’t get me wrong—I love a warm sunshiny day, and there is a certain unburdened novelty to going on an after-work run, wearing nothing but shorts and a t-shirt, in the middle of January. If I let myself, I could even get poetic about the beauty of finding warmth where there should be a freeze, or about the way nature plays by its own rules, regardless of what the calendar might say. 

But mostly, I felt annoyed. My skis sat in the closet, unused, all winter long—on the one weekend we actually got some accumulation, I was in Raleigh, of all places—and I didn’t really know why I’d even bothered to unpack my winter clothes. If winter were this mild, I wondered, how hot might summer get in my non-air conditioned apartment?

Nevertheless, one sunny Saturday I decided to take advantage of the weather and embark on one of my favorite hikes, starting from Pinnacle Park in Sylva, North Carolina. Not that it mattered this time around, but it’s a great hike for winter due to the fact that the trailhead is at a lower elevation. When snow and ice reign above it’s still safe to drive there. Of course, the trail itself climbs steadily upward, elevation increasing more than 2,000 feet by its terminus at the Pinnacle, which boasts a fantastic 360-degree view. 

The trail can get crowded during warmer seasons, but today it was basically empty. I parked, filled out a permit, and let my dog off the leash. Sunlight easily found its way down through the leafless trees, and that combined with the immediately palpable uphill grade soon had me down to a short-sleeve shirt. 

Winter, it seemed, had vanished. 

As I made my way toward the top, though, something changed. The sun, so high when I started out at 2 p.m., had begun its slip downward, and as the trail wrapped around to the northeast side of the mountain, it became invisible. A chill overtook my bare arms, forcing me to stop and pull a few layers out of my backpack. 

Further up, winter’s presence became stronger. The sections of mud that sometimes pockmarked the trail ceased to be squishy, instead becoming hard and crystalline as the water within them turned to ice. Likewise, watery puddles turned to a frozen constellation of glass, rocks and dried leaves. 

Hoarfrost began to appear alongside the trail—a sight half like snow, half like fungus, the structured curves of ice pushing up from soil no longer sufficient to hold that water in solid form. 

In the most protected spots, under perpetually shadowed rock ledges and sides of fallen logs, remnants of snow persisted. As to when that snow had originally fallen, I had no clue. 

But I didn’t need to know. I was happy, ludicrously happy, to see these glimpses of winter, this evidence that an entire season hadn’t gone completely forgotten. 

I had to document it, of course. I knelt down to the hoarfrost, turned on the camera, did my best to capture its curves, its whiteness rimmed with flecks of the dirt and moss from which it had emerged. Without a photo, I was sure, nobody down below would believe what I’d seen, so surrounded were they by this new reality of spring-like winters with 60-degree highs. 

A little bit further and I reached the Pinnacle, the big rocky outcrop overlooking Sylva and the Appalachian mountains surrounding it. It’s usually a view I have to share with at least one other hiker, but today there was nobody else around. Sitting at an exposed 5,008 feet of elevation, my extra layers were still necessary despite the return of sunshine. I pulled out a hat as well and fished in my backpack for the treat I’d lugged all the way from the car—a Thermos of hot water and a couple bags of ginger tea. 

The wind had picked up some sharpness with the waning day, and the hot tea felt deliciously warm going down my throat. I surveyed the town spread out below me, idly trying to identify buildings and landmarks. As always when I visit the Pinnacle, my first thought was that I could easily stay there for hours. 

But that wasn’t going to happen. I finished the tea and then looked at my phone, noting two hours until sunset—just enough time to make it back to the bottom before dark. So I packed up and returned the way I’d come, through bare-limbed forest marked with patches of snow and ice, racing against a sunset that would come too early and a night that would last too long. 

I smiled. 

It felt like winter.