The Silence of Snow, by Taylor Stein

The snow always brings silence. Not just quiet, but silence. It is possibly the only thing about the snow that I still enjoy. As children, I am sure most of us always looked forward to the snow. It was what made the winter cold more bearable. There was always fun to be had with friends sledding, building forts, and staging snowball fights. But it seems like those things, those simple pleasures, slowly disappear as our years add up. The innocence we possessed as children has long gone, and less and less often do we find the time to escape to spiral of modern society, to take a step back and enjoy life. We just go on, never questioning, never thinking, never living.

Not even the river makes a sound today. I’ve never seen it this still. It might as well be completely frozen. It looks almost like glass, so placid. I feel like if I were to step onto it from this rock, the murky water might support me. If only. I lie back on the sloping surface of the boulder, letting my head hang off the high edge and hover just inches above the freezing river. The sky above me is a dull gray with pale swathes of yellow where what is left of the daytime sun fights to be seen through the endless cloud cover. I wonder if this is what the skies over Gary, West Virginia look like year-round. Probably even more gray than this. At least these are actual clouds, not massive pockets of soot and slurry floating through the air. Imagine if those playful little snowdrifts you see when the wind kicks up were actually drifts of dust and waste from the freshly demolished mountain one valley over.

I have always been very aware of the fact that I am so lucky to live the life I live in the time and place I live it in, meaning I know a lot of other people are much worse off than me. I know these people are everywhere, many being located in Third World countries, but the fact that such horrible things are happening on our own soil is distressing. A recurring theme in Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt is the one that corporate and government corruption runs rampant through our country, decimating anyone standing in the Machine’s way. It is true of the Native Americans, when the government took and took and took from them until they were left with nothing but barren lands and alcoholism. It is true of the poor souls in Camden and their corrupt, cut-throat mayor who abandoned civility and his people long ago. It is true of huge corporations like Walmart, that completely suck the life from local economies and take more jobs than they create. And it is certainly true of the coal companies, who leach the land and leave nothing in the wake but contamination and death. I wanted to shed a tear for Larry Gibson, especially during the moments when the coal conglomerates seized the land where his people were buried. If I can feel such feelings of sadness and remorse, followed immediately by such a burning anger toward the coal company, I can hardly imagine how he must truly feel.

I am getting tired of this weather. It is like an itch that never goes away. Off in the distance, I can see a rope swing hanging from a tree branch about 30-40 above the water. I remember what it feels like, slowly inching my wet feet up the steep, precarious incline of the tree trunk, tightly holding the rope just in case I slipped off. I can almost feel the summer heat pressing on my body. Almost to the top. The water looks so much farther away than I thought it would. Adrenaline kick. Exhilaration. Elevation. Now. I miss the feeling of weightless the fall brings. Just before I hit the water, the rope tightens and pulls me up as I skim my feet across the river surface. Release. I can’t wait for summer.

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