I’ve been walking so long everything’s started to look the same and I can’t remember if I’ve passed the same bush five times or if all the bushes have just all become so similar that I can’t differentiate between them. I’ll put more faith in my navigational skills and hope it’s the latter, but even with repetitive foliage I take notice of the temperature dropping around me. Wherever I’m headed, it’s clearly winter. A chill dances up my spine, stopping at a wrinkle in my nose. Most of my life has been spent frolicking in warmer climates, stalking through forests that were more tropical than arctic. I’m not sure if I welcome the unfamiliar bite of the frosty wind or despise it. 
 

The longer I walk, the quicker the season changes around me. The air chills rapidly and soon I can see each breath seep from my lips. The trees morph from leafy canopies to naked skeletons whose pointy claws scrape the graying sky. It’s not much longer before I’m crunching through snow and picking my footsteps much more prudently around precariously iced over patches of terrain. Winter, I decide, is dismal, much like my mood. A snowflake floats down from the clouds and chooses to land on the bridge of my nose where it promptly melts away. All I can bother to do is hiss as the cold prickles at my face, but the reaction is more a product of my mood rather than true distress for the weather. I’m beginning to think I don’t mind the cool climate nearly as much as I’d expected to. The stripped-down trees give the forest an illusory feel and for once I’m divorced from the memories of all the time I spent with my mother in the lush woods of my childhood. Winter feels like an escape.
 

The snow-covered thicket draws me in further, something about it feeling welcoming despite being so bare and cold. It feels safe here, despite my instinct reminding me that nothing about the wild is safe. It’s only now that I realize how tired I am. I’m not sure how long I’ve walked – walking is most of what I do these days so it all seems to meld together. Or perhaps it’s the cold settling into my bones; tricking my muscles into thinking they’re fatigued so it can better sap the heat from my body. Regardless, I do rest, entirely unconcerned of being out in the frost. I’ve survived worse than a simple drop in temperature; this too shall pass.