Solace & Storm

There is an illusion about snow, a carefully curated belief that it is only ever graceful, soft, and pure. But I have seen snow in its truest form, in all its wrath and reckoning. I have watched it fall in silent flurries, as if whispering lullabies to a quiet world, and I have seen it descend with fury, devouring everything in its path.

There is no mercy in an avalanche, no kindness in a blizzard that blinds, makes one or many lost, and chokes. Snow is not merely a thing of beauty… it is a thing of power, a paradox of wonder and indeed, devastation.

Have you ever stood beneath a sky so thick with white that the very air felt stolen from your lungs? Have you ever braced against a storm that seemed sentient in its rage, clawing at you with a cold that does not simply touch skin, but pierces straight to the bone? Winter does not ask for permission. It does not come gently when it does not wish to. It arrives as it pleases, on its own terms, and in that way, I have always felt a strange kinship with it.

The world loves to romanticize the snow, to paint it as something pristine and untainted. And yet, I have always seen more. The peace-filled clearer sky ending. The beauty, yes… but also the storm before the peace… the ache.

The way it blankets the earth in an unbroken silence, yet steals warmth without hesitation. The way it glistens under the sun, only to blind and burn in its brilliance. Reflecting in more magnitude, all the shine the Sun has to offer. The way it buries the past beneath it, making everything look untouched, yet it kills as much as it preserves.

There is no light without shadow, no warmth without cold. Snow understands this better than most things.

It is harmony in contradiction… just as I am.

There is a certain poetry in the way snow falls, a softness in the descent, even when destruction follows. It reminds me that life, too, is like this… delicate and harsh, serene and storm-wracked, beautiful and cruel.

Joy does not exist without sorrow. There is no true appreciation of warmth without first enduring the cold. And perhaps that is why I find something sacred in both the gentleness of a snowfall and the brutality of a winter storm.

One cannot exist without the other. They belong to the same force, the same vast and unyielding season, the same undeniable truth.

Yin and yang. Shadow and light.

There is something profoundly human about the nature of snow, about the way it is both loved and feared. It is the laughter of children as they sculpt fragile wonders from its frozen form, and it is the weeping of those who lose their way in a blizzard’s grip.

It is the peaceful hush of a world freshly blanketed in white, and it is the thunderous roar of an avalanche swallowing everything beneath it.

It is both the comfort of a warm drink beside a fire and the desperate, shivering agony of those left out in the cold.

I have known both sides.

I have walked through winter’s gentle embrace, where everything feels soft and weightless, where the world is quiet and time itself seems to hold its breath. I have also felt the full force of its rage, when it howls and tears through all that stands before it, when it reminds you just how fragile you truly are.

There is a lesson in that, in the way snow can be both sanctuary and storm. A reminder that sometimes, even the things that seem the most beautiful can also break you. And yet, even in the breaking, there is something sacred.

I have learned to love the winter, not in spite of its cruelty, but because of it. Because it teaches me that nothing is ever just one thing. That beauty and pain, joy and suffering, love and loss… they do not cancel each other out. They exist together, inextricably bound. And maybe that is the truest kind of beauty there is.

So, let it snow. Let it fall in gentle whispers, let it rage in furious screams. Let it cover the world in white, let it consume all in its path. I will stand in it, arms open, knowing that I, too, am made of contradiction. That I, too, can be both light and dark, warmth and cold… solace and storm.

And in that understanding, I am free.