Winter probably seems like a weird time to start a hiking habit. But I have always felt like there was particular sort of beauty about this time of year. I think because this time of year always reminds me of The Lord of the Rings. Maybe it’s because this was the time of year I first sped through the books as they were a present to a young me, or maybe because the leafless trees make me think of the struggling and dying lands surrounding Mordor.

Maybe it’s because unseasonably warm days like today make me think of Eowyn’s killer of a descriptor, “fair and cold, like a morning of pale spring”. Hoo. That’s practically the epic fantasy version of being described as a long cool woman in a black dress. You realize quickly that though she’s young, she’s not your average spring chicken, as it were. She has the air of someone who has seen winter before her time. Trauma will do that to you.

I always identified super hard with Eowyn. At first, I think it was because she was the first female character I saw in a fantasy story who did a lot more than get cursed or blessed with a fairy godmother. It might have also been because of her descriptor, being born on the first day of spring myself, I’ve always felt a sort of internal duality. I know I often can come off as cold and uninterested unless I work hard to stay animated. I like being around people, but they exhaust me too.

But as I’ve grown older I think I also identified with her self-destructive desire to throw herself into glory before “all chance of doing great deeds is gone beyond recall or desire”. It’s maybe the words of someone young and naïve trying to justify the horror of going to war, with maybe a touch of fear of growing old. But for me it also smacks of someone who’s gotta do the thing before they either forget or run out of, what I call “want-to”. As a forgetful person with an often limited supply of “want-to” I get this.

Sometimes I worry that age and constraints that come with it have in fact eroded a lot of my want to. So I think I also love this time of year for the possibilities as well. I’m reminded that there are always possibilities, even if it doesn’t feel like it. Even if I feel like I’ve lost my “recall or desire”. My “want to”.

Hiking this time of year has a particular kind of honesty to it. A vulnerability and quiet you don’t quite get in the spring or summer. This time of year, the trees have bared themselves and shown their nakedest, most wrinkled bits to us, in the dead of winter no less, but they’re still hanging on. And they aren’t even ashamed. They’re letting it all hang out, not a single care to our opinions given.

I like to think that they offer the same level of acceptance to those who choose to walk among them too. Hiking to relieve stress? Rad, come on in, the trees say. Hiking because it’s better than crying at home because you just can’t force yourself to write anymore? Also fine. Come on in. To a tree you’re never late. And you’re never early. You are where you are when you are and there’s nothing else to it. No judgment or timeline. For all the tree cares, you’re a ding-dang wizard because you’re there precisely when you mean to be. Just don’t litter or hurt the trees and it’s all good.

Even after the trees have shown everyone their proverbial tree asses in the winter, they still have the audacity to adorn themselves with buds and blooms and leaves in the spring. And they keep on growing and giving us vital oxygen too, the self-important things! Again and again and again they do this, without even rubbing our faces in it like the smug jerks they totally could be.

They do this by holding on and staying true to themselves, true to the goal of always growing. Never trying to be a flower or a bush, nah, they’re trees, damnit, deciduous trees at that, always changing in order to grow, and you can eat sap if you have a problem with it.

You aren’t late. You aren’t early. You aren’t spring or winter either. You might be feeling cold and naked and alone in the winter, but as long as you don’t try to be a flower or a bush, you’ll flourish again soon, maybe even stronger and more lush than last summer.