36 Comments
Dec 27, 2021Liked by Walter Kirn

I felt like I was there watching your follies. And I felt scared with you and for you. (Truthfully, I am terrified of being lost in the cold.) Great short story and I hope everyone really appreciated that tree. Happy New Year to you and yours.

Expand full comment

Thank you for relaying your story of Christmas ordeal. It's a great reminder that we humans, even at the height of all our powers, are still just a veneer away from an uncaring universe. Your/our family, though, is a beacon of hope that can help us focus our minds and get us back to our path.

Expand full comment

This was so much fun to read and made me think about how I felt in church when I was a kid, how my parents had spiffs during the season (whose doesn't?), how my Dad would have done something reckless like this (where his heart overruled his head). It was easy to visualize your disorientation and circle-walking, I've been in a snow-covered pine forest at night in winter and it is beautiful but eerie. Your story was a gift of memories of my own Christmas pasts and I thank you for the pleasure of it.

Expand full comment

A really nice story...and it's also really nice that you survived to tell it! It's so easy to get turned around and confused in the woods, even in good weather and light conditions, much less in snowy darkness. Most people who have spent any time in the woods have experienced that moment of panic you mentioned, and then hopefully were able to pull themselves back together and start thinking more clearly.

Expand full comment

What a nice story. You have a real gift for writing and I think that you just gave me a great Christmas present. God bless us all; each and every one of us. Loosely paraphrased from Tiny Tim.

Expand full comment

Glad you made it to tell the story. Merry Christmas to you!

Expand full comment

Walter, A LIGHT IN THE TREES is a "plastic, fantastic" story! Happy Holidaze!

Expand full comment

Great writing, Walt. Merry Christmas from Plague Island.

Expand full comment

I suspect one of your life skills is a certain willingness to "screw up," moderated by the willingness to fess up.

Expand full comment

Ps, I love this passage: "The moment when you know you’re lost – not merely disoriented or confused but truly, irrevocably lost – brings with it a sort of humiliating thrill. Can this really be? You’re alive, your brain is working, and you’re still the same person you were a moment earlier, but suddenly the world itself has changed. It is your foe, and you are not its equal. It requires your surrender. Silence falls."

When I was young, living in an unfamiliar city and confused about my future, I would climb on my bicycle and ride hard into the hilly suburbs, deliberately ignoring my way until I no longer knew where I was nor how to get back. Such peace.

Expand full comment
Dec 23, 2021·edited Dec 24, 2021

I'm glad you kept your head. Great line about the whole world becoming one's 'foe', suddenly.

Was recently disoriented (quasi-lost) in the snowy woods of NM. It all felt minor afterwards, though for a half hour faced the quickening terror of being cut off from all known points, of everyone and everything familiar. There's something oddly addictive (for me anyway) to getting lost and finding one's way back again...I don't know why. Tugging on the umbilical cord of existence

Expand full comment

Very good story, thank you. Yet I cannot refrain from making this one comment. In Part One, if you walk in snow that "reaches almost to my knees", no one by the palest "trickle of moonlight" can fail to retrace their steps.

Expand full comment

Thanks. Memories of my foolish days arrive. The glory of surviving them restored. Hopes for a future in spite of our foolishness!

Expand full comment

A great story, told beautifully. Would make a perfect complement to Jean Sheppard's Christmas Story movie.

Expand full comment

Yes! Apple-cheeked Ralphie now an adult on another misadventure in the snow, from "you'll shoot your eye out" to "you'll freeze your ass off."

Expand full comment

Sound like the ride between Ashton and Osborn Bridge. A better Christmas story than Die Hard.

Expand full comment
founding

Thank God for your hearty Midwestern stock!

Expand full comment

Excellent.

Expand full comment