After only a few short steps, I turned and looked again upon the small creek winding through the snow and trees toward the lake, slowly dashing its own essence into the greater existence it sought to join.  I regarded the scene intently as though I could permanently mark this time and place in my memory, perhaps seeking to assure these waters that they would not be forgotten after blending with the waters of the lake.

I turned and walked near aimlessly the last few steps to the edge of the lake, compelled forward by the insistent beckoning of the snow, a call which tugged at the very fiber of my being, a directive I could not refuse.  I stood on the lake's shore, its ice-cold waters rhythmically dancing until they reached the place where I stood, lapping endlessly at the bank by which I now found myself.

The snow formed a crepuscular shroud over the land and water.  The day now fully upon the world still held to the darkness of the night, like a cloak rested upon existence itself.

What compels within me this obsequious attention to your presence? I asked.  Why am I held by your unremitting grasp?  Have I no will of my own?

I waited for a response from the snow.  As if by sheer force of will, I demanded an answer from within my heart.  I knew, however, that none would be forthcoming unless they chose to respond.

Like the creeks before, I meandered even closer to the lake, eventually finding myself standing on the pier above the cold dark depths.

The world seemed a lonely place from this vantage point.  I looked first this way then that, looking out across the water at the cold, starkly quiet places beyond.

"What brings me here?" I wondered aloud.  The sound of my own voice shocked me.  It pierced the air like an explosion.  It was an affront to the very stillness and silence which surrounded me.  No life could be seen except a few birds soaring through the snow with magic beauty.  Why then had I voiced aloud that single thought?

Speak not.

I felt this command pass through me like a wave of unseen energy.  The singular voice contained a plurality which could only be felt.  It shook me to the core, a maelstrom of ubiquitous power and sound that had no physical presence, yet it trembled my body, juddered my bones, and pierced my mind and heart.

We are you, and you us.  We become one.  We exist as you exist.  Speak not, for it shatters our essence.

The chill of these words ran down my spine.  As impenetrable as I felt when leaving home and hearth, the snow had successfully invaded my armor.  The cold enveloped me both without and within.  While only a few moments before I had considered the environment too harsh to support further wanderings, the intimacy between the self of snow and the self of me banished that discomfort.

I discovered the snow resting upon my shoulders.  Lifting my hand above my hat, I brushed away another fortress of ice sitting upon me there.  A downward glance revealed frigid whiteness hiding my shoes and steadily climbing my legs.  Why had I not noticed this invasion before?  And was it somehow acclimating me to the cold, making me more cozy in this place contrary to human comfort?  Yes, I believe it is.

Do you appreciate our élan?

The question gave me pause, a moment to consider its meaning.  I could not be certain what precisely the snow meant by this inquiry.

I do not understand I responded.  Your meaning remains unclear to me.  While I appreciate and acknowledge your power and beauty, I remain unable to appreciate fully what has brought me here.  Your intentions are alien to me.

As though I had raised a challenge, the snow began to blow harder, to fall with more ferocity.  Its near lambent dance over the water became like a tempest, hiding more and more of the distant shoreline.  My vision was awash in violent white, the world succumbing to the will of this glacial presence.

Only then did I begin to realize the power of stillness, of silence.  The world was wrapped in this blanket of quiet, life frozen in time like a photograph — only living under the pressing cloak of the shrouding snow.

Where is your great city now?

I turned southwest with deliberateness.  The answer was apparent to me even before my eyes settled upon the place just beyond the hill across from me, the place beyond which can be seen downtown Dallas rising from the city's heart.  Today it did not rise from behind that hill.

Tell us what you see?  The houses built on yonder shore?  The bridge spanning distances a mere walk from this place?  The constructs of your great city’s core?  Or do you see the shores of this lake bathed in hues of white?  All other color washed from the face of the earth?  A transformation of worlds?  Here in your aloneness, tell us what you see?

I knew in my mind that the world had not vanished from around me.  Despite what my eyes beheld, I knew I would be equally difficult to see from those distant and unseen places.  I also began to understand that the snow at this moment exerted such utter control over life, even in its minute form and state of uncontrolled descent.  Alone each flake was unimportant.  Together…  Ah, together they are infinitely strong and infinitely many, capable of vanquishing life to the utmost reaches of the cold, forced to remain unseen and tucked away until this icy grasp is released.

We are small and inconsequential, yet we are able with our prowess to cloak from you the existence of your own city, within whose boundaries you exist.  We hide from you the north crossing which is but a walk from this place.  What power have we to be so influential?  What strength exhibit we to control your senses so absolutely?

I stood motionless, alone in this place on the pier overlooking the lake, here in the snow.  I allowed the cold wind blowing across the water to encircle me, carrying the snow all about me.  It touched my face with fingers of glass, melted quickly upon my lips with a refreshing chill, and embraced me from head to toe.

Unaccompanied in this place, I was he who existed where no others existed — when no others existed — isolated from the world by the freezing landscape around me.  The snow separated me from all things except itself.  It forced life to retreat for protection, thereby allowing me this time to fully and wholly be engulfed by this wonderland.

I know not what power it is you possess, nor do I know how I come to be so unable to resist your beckonings.  These things you show me are beautiful; they are spectacular disparities of being.  You make a world of peace and tranquility which hushes even the most hurried among us.  You give a gift, and perhaps it is that which has placed me under your spell.

Even as the words formed in my head, I felt them drawn from me by the snow, now somehow ingrained into every part of me.  That intimacy and my own words suddenly called forth a spark of understanding that had eluded me before.

Our time grows limited.  Come with us; be with us.  Your journey is not yet complete.  Even now our strength wanes.

The snow was slowing only slightly.  Had I just become aware of this weakening?  Or, instead, had it only just begun to diminish in intensity?  It still came with force and numbers that gave the air weight and texture it could not otherwise possess, nevertheless I sensed I was not yet in the place to which the snow was leading — and it would soon be unable to complete this self-appointed task.

The snow was leading, and I was following.  It was clear to me then.  But leading me where?  Or to what?  The journey was preparing me through sights and sounds and experiences and journeying, but preparing me for what?  Even then, the warp and woof of my being contained the truth.  Deep down inside where I could not yet see, the answer already had been written.  This is why I hearkened its call: I wanted to follow where the snow would lead.

So I turned and walked, returning the same way by which I had arrived at this scene.  I must understand the endgame.

I stepped around the foliar and branching carnage which blocked my path, lain before me like so many soldiers on so many battlefields that had come before.  Carefully navigating around this obstacle of snow and tree, I was at times uncertain whether I could pass beyond its reach or instead would be introduced to the ground on my way to the bottom of the hill.  Eventually, with all thought now stifled by the snow's beckoning call, I made my way around and continued toward the lake.

The snow hushed the world in its grasp of silence.  It drowned the voices of life with its quiet, its overwhelming quiet, invading my thoughts and engulfing my senses with a muted void.

I danced into it, a parade of one, a silent rush of Earth's frozen confetti falling soundlessly around me, on me, at my feet.  Its grasp on me was tightening, its wintry insistence slowly invading every part of my being.  Had I not dressed invincibly?  Or was the snow gaining strength against my armor?

This is now our world.  There is no protection from us in this place.

Had I inadvertanly voiced my concern to them?  More likely, was this interaction becoming personal, my own thoughts no longer my own?

We have much to show you.  The path is laid out.  Delay not in your journey.  Come.  Be with us.

I followed the whisper, the calling which reached into my very soul, the voice which made no sound, the call which I heard with my being, my heart, my mind, yet which my ears longed to hear.

The darkness had mindfully given way to the morning light.  But this was not the world I remembered.  All color replaced by frosty hues, this landscape so familiar to me was now a tundra, so alien, so unlike the memories of yesterday.

I continued on, the snow around my feet now several inches high, threatening to consume me from below, reaching upward with each step as if to capture me.

What have you done to the world? I pondered.  Awash in shades of white and gray, I felt transported to another place, perhaps even another time.

This world we make from our essence.  For this moment and in this place, it is our creation, our realm.  None can stand against us.

I then realized I had reached the park around the lake.  Where was this place?  Its beauty was matched only by the hostility of the environment: cold; deafening silence; snow assaulting every place I looked, falling with such vehemence and quietness in this expanse of chill.  It overwhelmed me.

Why was I not mindful of my journey here?  How is it that I could be standing in this place without recollecting the passage of time and space?  Whence comes this alien landscape I now behold?  All the world is succumbing to the snow.

Come forth.  We crafted this world from water and cold.  Behold the naissance of our existence, the incarnation of our will, the manifestation of our dominion.

I continued forward, yet I remained aware that I could not will myself to stop.  Was it the beauty that held me captive, unable to control my own destiny?  Or was it something else?

I glanced behind me, seeking to comprehend my own wanderings.  I could not remember arriving here, where I now stood, yet I could see, well beyond the bridge, where I had been just moments before.  Or had it been longer?

I was nearer the lake now.  Drawn to it by some force unseen, unheard and unchallenged, I continued on.

Where lies your strength over me? I demanded silently.  What enchantment bewitches me thus, and how comes it then that I unwittingly bequeath my will to you?

Silence.  I listened so intently that, were it possible, I would strain my ears to hear that which was not said.  I beckoned to the snow with sheer force of thought, challenging it with the substance of my own determination.

Have you abandoned me? I wondered.  Were I to be abandoned in such a place, to be held captive by such beauty, I could not — would not — wish to leave it.

My senses gorged on the surroundings, gluttonously seeking to consume all the sensory input available, voraciously striving to remain undeprived of all this scene could bestow.

I reached the edge of the lake, mysteriously realizing I could not trace my path to this spot.  I paused where I had persisted so many times before, yet did not recognize this place in this time.

I stood motionless here, here where creeks and tributaries approached the lake and, in their last stand of defiance, joined together, as if their combined strength could enable them to resist their onward motion.  That selfsame motion would carry them forth into an amalgam of their individual essences, a final bastion of gathered resistance before their aloneness is conquered by the lake.

We remain.

Their voice, singular yet plural, came from all around me, traveled through me, and settled about me in omnipresent calm tempered by its own strength of presence.  There was tranquility here.  And yet there was the commotion of the snow, endlessly replacing nature's own landscape with one of its — their — own making.  A stark wasteland of winter made complete only by the wonderland of its icy depths.

I was held firmly by unseen hands, unable to move of my own free will, held still by the cold and silent onslaught which threatened to replace existence as I stood watching.

We join you, and you us.  We become you, and you us.  Meditate upon this place no further.  Your journey is not yet complete.  We lead that you may follow, hence follow us now.

And I did.

I glanced upon the snow one day.  Having awaked from a winter's nap, the night still pressing down upon the world, desperately holding to that which it could not keep, I bore witness to winter's folly: snow wisping from the darkness.  With magic it enticed me out of the warmth of home.  I listened intently to its call.

Come to us.  Join us.  Be with us.

The beckoning was irresistible, a siren song sent forth from a chorus of nature's bounty.

I heeded its desire obediently and robed myself with invincible attire.  The allure could not be denied, but I would not go unprepared.

Stepping out into the dawn, I could now see the snow falling from the sky, falling easily, happily, quietly.  Gentle at first, a powdery display of chill which was as light as the air itself.

I walked.  As I walked, I realized night's hold had been broken, the light of day now clumsily filtered through cloud and snow, the land awash in pale light.  Was the snow coming more forcefully now, or had I simply been unable to fully appreciate it in the dark?

Is not your intention to demonstrate your power to me? I queried.  Your song tempted me here, carried me from safety's arms and warming hold.  Why am I here?

I listened.  I could hear nothing aside from the quiet, the soundless stillness enveloping me.  A few seconds, perhaps a few more, and I began to think I had imagined it all.

Then, inaudibly, I heard it.  Look skyward.

And I did.

Snow now weighed heavily upon the trees, a substantial coat lain upon the world.  It continued falling, blurring all outside of my immediate presence, coming powerfully, large, perfect snow flying at me from the unnatural, gray, featureless sky.

This is but the beginning.  Our strength will be evident, our will undeniable.  Come forth, tarry not in worry, and observe the world we make for you.

I followed, unable to resist.  Cold wrapped itself around me, an invasion which would seek to breach the barriers with which I had protected myself, its sharp hands of glass scraping at me, pushed against me and around me by the wind whose howl in my ears was muffled only by the persistent quiet of the snow.

I turned in the direction of the lake, and I walked.  The snow was my only company on this journey, holding me in its icy depths.

It came quickly now, roughly, falling about me with increasing intensity, its might made apparent.  The white shrouded all things.  Color was washed from the face of the Earth, the snow exchanging winter's starkness for the hue of its own frozen voice.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, I became mindful my path was blocked.  This route, the way, was near impassible.  The weight of the snow, its heaviness on all things, prostrated evergreen foliage and branches, holding them relentlessly, holding them to the ground — and across my path.  I had walked beneath these very same branches many times in the past, and they had always been well above me, forever held toward the firmament.  Now they lay before me, under foot, unable to lift themselves once more unto the heavens.

Then, whispering from all around me, the snow once again spoke in its noiseless voice.

Behold the strength of our stillness.  Behold the power of our silence.