In the Land of the Frost Giants

The view of the Eagle Creek Valley, obscured by the falling snow.

I write these words in a world suddenly transformed, a new world of gleaming white and blowing cold. A place in which survival suddenly becomes something which one can longer take for granted. Of all the moods of Nature that we experience on our land, the arrival of a serious winter storm shows us one of her harshest and the most beautiful. It is a test of fortitude and preparedness that challenges all of those who live comfortably insulated from nature to remember that She is our mistress and She does what she wills.

As the snow fell and the cold began to set in, something transformed within me as well, internally, spiritually. My imagination awakened in the dark snow-filled forests of a mythic Northern realm, where storms like this howled through the thatched roofed halls and snow blew in under the massive oak doors. In place of the modest wood stove which warms our modern barn house, in this hall there blazed a ragin…