A walk in the snow... journeying within

2.3 | PHOTO ESSAY | What can a snow-laden landscape uncover about our own lives and society?

Jan 17, 2021

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Snow isn’t part of my tropical experience whose breezes are refreshingly warmer. (Am I saying I’m feeling cold?) At best, snow has conjured up for me images of a fantasyland; and as kids, these were visions straight out of a Lewis Carroll novel:

I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, “Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.”
Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass

But even here when it snows in the higher altitudes of the Hautes Fagnes or Baraque de Fraiture, it’s interesting to see Belgians gleam with excitement with the prospect of a winter wonderland — so much so, that it can cause some traffic chaos on the weekend. You at once realise that there’s something magical about a snowfall.

The previous week, there was this same excitement when a Leuven photographer Ivan Vander Biesen invited me to a walk in the snow, accompanied by an avid hiker Niamat Ali Khan who curated for us a perfect walk off the beaten track. With all due respect to the local corona measures, we walked midweek and were fortunate not to encounter a single soul — not that we do not like people, but this was for us the safest way of being socially responsible. (Thank you Ivan and Niamat.)

However, what was meant to be a pleasant hike turned out to be a refreshing journey for my soul too. This week I present you a photo essay of this walk in the snow as a reflection on our lives and society… of the many journeys we undertake.

It’s cold. I have hardly begun this hike, and my fingers are already numb.

I’m not sure where I’m going, but something tells me to keep walking. Did not some wise man say, walking itself is life? Or something like that…

The moon and sun are eternal travelers. Even the years wander on. A lifetime adrift in a boat, or in old age leading a tired horse into the years, every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.
Matsuo Bashō, Narrow Road to the Interior and other writings

It’s a familiar landscape, but for a moment it seems all new — silhouetted by a snowscape, stripped to its bare essentials; my life seems familiar for a moment.

An infinitesimally tiny virus is stripping me of all my conceit; it makes me see: what’s essential and what’s not.

Sometimes I see, sometimes not.

Or maybe, I refuse to see.

I still keep foraging for I-don’t-know-what!

Maybe this is what I need?

Maybe that?

I don’t know. I feel I am lost.

Sometimes it feels like I’m missing the woods for the trees.

And yet, I need to still keep searching.

Yes, I need to still keep searching… within me.

Even within my frailty, I can be found.

Even within my brokenness, I can be loved.

Even within my vulnerability, there’s beauty waiting to be found.

Even in the most unexpected spaces…

… or in the company of one another …

… there’s me waiting to be found.

As the winter ebbs away and the thawing snow reveals my path, I discover my journey home. Like the wise man said, “every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.”

I keep walking, I keep searching… I keep finding, me.

Rinald D’Souza SJ

HISTORIA DOMUS

Looking for motivation?

Here’s Ivan pursuing his passion and making a picture on his analogue box camera in the freezing cold. (Here’s another photograph of Ivan by Niamat posted on his popular hiking group Walking-Hiking-Trekking in Belgium.)