I think I was 15. Wintertime. Saturday morning. Snow about six inches deep everywhere. Nothing going on at home, so I decided to go out.
I walked through the snow down to the railroad tracks, then stepping on every cross tie to the South Charleston C&O Railway station. No one there, no cars on the street, no sounds. No sounds: if you’ve never been in cold country when there’s snow, you don’t know that kind of silence. It is absolutely arresting. I was already accustomed to the uniqueness of a winter day, so there was nothing about this particular Saturday morning, until memories crept into my mind, as they do with the advancement of years.
Incidentally, and of no particular importance except that it’s folded into this memory, I had been given a pack of Kool Cigarettes by a buddy. Kool Menthol Cigarettes. I had been smoking for a while, so I lit up. Wow! the sensation was something: the smoke was enveloped in a soft, wispy ball of menthol, far different from regular cigarette smoke. Standing on the railroad platform, smoking that strange cigarette, occupies a sliver of time in this memory.
Back to the event. The part that still lives with me is certainly not the cigarettes — it is about how nature in its beauty enters and stays in the mind. What I really got hooked on that frigid Saturday morning was the incredible beauty of the white, motionless silence, affecting five senses: sight, sound, hearing, touch, and vision. The impact on my awareness was something I had never before experienced, nor seldom since.
I looked around at the railroad tracks, the trees on the other side, with naked black limbs, standing in stony silence, A section of snow on a limb falling silently to the ground, no whisper of life or wind or movement. The falling flakes against the grey background of sky. It brings to mind an early black and white photograph. I think I knew then, and I surely know now, that my sense of the world was different from that day on. I am sure that if by some chance I find myself somewhere on such a day, that time long ago will reintroduce itself and I will go there again.
Whether at a train station, or by a frozen stream, or on a dark street corner, it is the same: a memory without adequate description, frozen in time. If you’ve been there you know what I’m talking about, and like me, if you’re stuck for words — I understand.