Crunch,
ice breaks beneath shoes.
Snap,
stick breaks under weight.
Sigh,
cool breaths escape hastily through nostrils.
Red, chilled cheeks,
sweat-soaked brow.
A squirrel scurried under brush,
a paw print planted in otherwise pure snow.
Wind whistling,
then whispering
in between barren trees.
The only cure for a wild wanderlust.
Poet’s Note
This poem was written after reflecting on a winter hike. I spent time reflecting on the same places I frequent just through a new lens. Snow transforms familiar paths, changes the sounds, the textures, and the way the world feels underfoot. Every crunch of ice, every snap of a stick, and every exhale of cold air is magnified in stillness. The small details, the squirrel darting under brush, the paw print in pure snow, become markers of moments. Fleeting and yet permanent.
The poem is about noticing those shifts, both in the landscape and in myself. How a place can remain familiar and yet feel entirely new depending on the season, the weather, or the mind walking through it. The final line, “The only cure for a wild wanderlust,” is a quiet acknowledgment that these moments of attention, these walks through snow and cold, are what feed the urge to wander, to explore, to feel alive.
It is a meditation on presence, observation, and the subtle ways the world changes around us, even in places we thought we already knew.
