In the tent in the morning everything is orange, the sun is not yet above the horizon, light filtered through in the very same shade as the streetlights once were, their brightness doubled by the hardpacked snow, the room at the front of the house always bright enough to read through the night. A raven calls somewhere in the valley, but it fades as if it too isn’t ready for the morning. Years later, I would go home and find that the memory of those years seeped in only faintly – until I heard a screech of a blue jay, and then it came all at once. In the morning, I would read silently as smaller birds took turns in the bare birch tree outside the window, the vivid orange night fading to pale blue morning. Ever since, I’ve never failed to sleep for too much light. The raven calls again, this time from close, and I hear it land on a branch above the tent, a mother at the door and I’m up.
Most children might burst from the bed and through the door like penned animals escaping, but in December the sleeping bag in a tent holds tight. In the years in between, there were always days where a bedroom’s blanket lay even heavier, the morning slipping away. There, at least, is something I’ve learned: the opening of the door, seized unthinkingly, is natural – energizing. I stick an arm out and reveal the trees and the air which floats in thick. Nothing in sight glows gold yet, except the blue of the sky straight above. I wait a long while, wrestling with expectation, not wanting to spoil the surprise.
The zipper of the sleeping bag is the keystone, the courage finally congregating and ripping it out: the beginning to a rockslide to be ridden through the day. In one motion rising, tripping, pulling on a boot and then another, standing and stretching then stumbling just far enough. Once, I had lain there waiting for everyone else to awake. I wish now I was the sort of person to rise early enough to watch the light of the landscape appear, the blue most beautiful then.
I turn and look to the tent where the inner moisture has crystallized, every rustling sending a snowfall down onto the bag, the headlamp, the half-eaten chocolate, the copy of Catcher In The Rye, read on this night every year. The raven appears motherly again, screeching for a breakfast that must be prepared before anything else. As I scurry around the pot, packing things hastily like gift wrap into a garbage bag, she watches contentedly.
Was there ever a reason to go for a walk in the winter then, between the practices and games and evenings spent at the outdoor rink until the old man who ran it shut the lights off? At eighteen, every mountain I’d ever seen had been in a movie or magazine. Now, one stands above me, hiding all the sun and the warmth. The slope turns left and I zig-zag across it, the repetition and the groaning in my legs like a bag skate at the annual practice on the morning of December 23rd. Toes clench the soles of my boots. They were frostbitten once trudging through the snow to break into a closed rink on Christmas day and never healed. My head sweats and I put my hat in my pocket. Mom laughs and asks, how could a boy ever get a shirt this sweaty in minus twenty-five? The energy it takes to climb a mountain or play a game of hockey.
Converging with the day’s warmth, both the sun and I head upwards, the light lagging behind and crossing the valley below. On the prairies, the sun rises down and sets upwards, the light creeping over the buildings and the trees. They let children out of school early enough for an hour’s light in the winter. We would wander home loosely, the sun already hidden by the horizon that sits in the city always too close. The crows would gather overhead, heading to roost.
After an hour the summit of the mountain appears beyond the ridge. At first I let out the tiniest pronouncement under my breath. After a few steps, another. With each metre climbed my voice grows louder, fuller. By the time I come onto the flat top of the col I’m yelling like a kid on Christmas morning. To the west is the flat of the ocean in the furthest distance, prairie folk always drawn there. To the east, a thousand miles of valleys: claustrophobic between me and the plains, a child stuck in the house on a beautiful day. At the top of the mountain, my phone cuts in and starts to ring. I was just about to call you mom.
We talk until my frozen hands can no longer hold on, the same reason we would finally give up on shiny at the rink. I put it down and walked onwards until it was time to sleep. In the winter, alone, that’s all there is to do.