Wintery Wanderland - 1. Wintery Wanderland

“You and your crazy ideas!”

“Life’s too short without some craziness once in a while.”

“But this? In the middle of the night?” My breath smelled. A sour, foul aftertaste.

“Don’t tell me you don’t find this amusing. Even just a little bit?”

He was right. It was…amusing. Crazy and amusing. And more than just a little bit. Two tipsy teens, wandering aimlessly in the woods, in the dead of the night… just for the sake of it. The thought made me smile. Or perhaps everything just seemed all the more funny with alcohol roaring wildly through your veins. “So where are we going again?”

He shrugged his shoulders, sending a thin gathering of snow tumbling like an avalanche down the front of his jacket. “No idea. Wherever this trail leads I guess.” His voice, that lovable voice with boyish mischief, carried off into the darkness by the strong gusts, with a hint of giggles. The snow-covered forest floor seemed to shine, like a smooth, soft carpet of dim white light.

My head spun, and the world around me with it. Snowflakes slashed silently across my face, cold at first and then turning damp as they quietly thawed on my burning cheeks. “How much did we have just now?” My giggles echoed his. We staggered forward, our bodies swaying slightly. Our feet crunched crisply, digging into the layer of snow like paw prints.

Crunch… Crunch…

“No idea! I mean some guy just kept on pouring, and I guess we just kept on drinking.” He kicked, sending snow spraying and exploring the ground before us. “I don’t even know the guy!”

“Oh! Did you see how people were so drunk they kept on falling over,” I said with excitement as I relived the images of our red-cheeked classmates on the ground, some flapping around with their arms, like children who refused to stand up. “Just hilarious!” The sky continued to pour more white confetti. A strange sight. All those countless flakes descended so rapidly and so erratically, yet without a sound. The silence around us broken only by our crunching steps, our incessant giggling, and constant wailing of the wind.

“Oh yeah! Even better when they stand up only to fall back down again!” He imitated the moves, dropping to the snow, like a dead lump of wood, and picking himself up again with his arms swaying and swaggering around madly like a madman. It was as if he could not care less that his jeans and jacket were covered in snow. Snow that stuck to the seams and seemed to huddle onto his body, not wanting to let go.

I stomped the snow beneath me, and thumped around, spurred by a strange source of liveliness, and the alcohol rush that did not seem to show any sign of subsiding. “Did you see the guy who had his face in the toilet bowl half the evening? He was barfing his guts out!”

“Yeah! And talk about those girls who were going around smooching whoever they got their hands on!” He puckered his lips, on which flakes fell and seemed to instantly melt.

“You were smooched, too?” I asked, wanting to know. Wanting to do the same.

“Yeah. She tasted like puke, which was pretty disgusting,” he said, screwing up his face and shuddering to show how awful it must have been. “But I don’t like that kind of thing anyways.”

“What? You didn’t like the smooching or the puke?” I joked, wondering how he would respond.

“Ha! If you put it that way, neither.” A curious answer. He grinned at me, kicking the snow again, this time softly, so that the clumps landed gently at my feet.

“This girl tried to get her hands on me, but I managed to get away!” My stomach growled. I tugged on my scarf out of nervousness.

He looked at me a moment, intense and interested, as if wanting to say something, but then chuckled. “Don’t you just love parties that turn out to be an orgy of drunkenness?” Perhaps it was the word ‘orgy’, or ‘drunkenness’, or both, or the fact that we were both drunk, but he bust out laughing. A free, uncontrollable laugh that took such control of his body that he had to stop and clutch his stomach. An infectious laugh, that I caught and that showed. He gasped for breath, and continued, his words broken by bouts of laughter: “Oh! Too—much! This—is too— much!” Snow drifted and rushed, drifted and rushed, twirling and swirling all around us to the command of the wind that waned and appeared, waned and appeared with even more forcefulness each time. Invisible crows croaked.

“Oh! We’re so naughty!” I said, as I tried to steady myself by grabbing onto his arm. Still in a fit of hysteria that made him bend forward, he too clasped both his arms onto my body, one resting on my shoulder, the other casually landing on my chest. It felt strange to be held. Held in this way. I shivered, realising that standing still made us vulnerable. Vulnerable not just to the cold, not just to the wind, but to a whole host of thoughts and feelings that if we were joking and kidding around were not there.

When we finally managed to recover from our round of laughter, there was an awkward moment. The snow kept on falling, like countless bits of torn pieces of paper, while the wind seemed to scream in our ears. As if suddenly becoming aware of the fact that we were holding onto each other still, he and I let go at the same time. I flashed a shy smile at him. He did the same, and then looked down. His pupils looked gentle, shimmering in a dim hue, and softly dilated in the dark. Shot after shot of hard drinks were not making me think or feel straight. “So what now?”

“Well, there’s really just one way. Forward!” he answered, and pointed into the darkness and unknown ahead of us. And forward we went, crunching and munching the layer of snow that collected and covered the trail. Surrounding us, black silhouettes of sturdy trees stood, braving the biting cold, braving the lashing of the unpredictable weather with their bare bark. They stood so still, stood so firm, as if they were waiting patiently for something wonderful and miraculous to happen. “You want to go on, right?” The snow fell, sideways, slapping our faces with little chilling tickles.

”Hmmm. What choice do we have? We’ve come so far already!” I answered. At the back of my mind I wondered where we were together, and whether he actually knew where we were heading. “It can’t get crazier than what’s already happened tonight.” Naked branches overhead were covered by a layer of snow, looking like the irresistible icing on chocolate rolls.

“Who knows,” he said, “Maybe, just maybe, we’ll run into that great big polar bear that got out of the zoo the other day!” He tried to stand up as straight as he could, raised his arms into the air and put an aggressive look on his face, roaring. His hands clawed playfully at me, and I agilely leapt to the side, stumbling, almost falling head over heels at his feet. We looked at each other’s faces, and as if recognising the effects of heat and dizziness from the drinks earlier had on us, burst into roaring laughter again. My eyes teared, the warm drops clinging onto the soft skin just beneath my lashes.

“Where do you come up with crazy ideas like that?” I admired his sudden spontaneity, his ability to turn things into a joke, and the gift of enjoying life as fully as it comes, seizing every moment as if it were the last. It was everything the shy person within me, that little boy inside of a grown body who was ever so self-conscious, ever so insecure longed to be, and longed to be close to. “Crazy ideas that brought us here in the middle of who knows where!” I put my hands on my waist, trying to pretend to look angry, and without much success. The chuckle that could not be locked behind my teeth escaped.

“I don’t know! It just comes! Don’t you have moments you want to do something totally unexpected? You know, so that no two days are the same.” In the space between our eyes, snowflakes fluttered wildly, each speckle, each cluster seemingly having a mind of its own in the totality of this brewing storm. “Living as if there were no tomorrow!”

“And walking around in a snowstorm is one of these things?”

“Yeah! Exactly” His face seemed to brighten the instant he heard that I understood him, and the whole point behind this spur-of-the-moment trek through the dark, dark woods, in the cold, cold snowy night. “I mean, look at us! We’re walking around like drunks. We don’t know where we’re going. And we’re laughing so much!” His voice and incessant laughter seemed to echo in the empty woods, emphasising the fact that we were really alone together. The thought was somewhat creepy, but being around him made it somehow comforting. And the alcohol still lingered, dampening and drowning away the eeriness.

“Uh…correction. We are drunks!” My body swayed toward his, and nudged him on the shoulder, at the same time trying to keep myself steady. “Drunks taking a casual stroll through the woods because it’s what drunken people do!” Trudging through snow made it all the more difficult. It was like wadding through water, only, instead of the plopping sounds of the waves at your feet, there were crunching sounds. The kind of sound you hear when you grind your teeth tightly together. My whole body burnt, and heat sweltered, especially around my chest, while my stomach churned and moaned, trying to digest to overdose of alcohol. I felt sick, but alive.

“Oh, boy! I can’t remember the last time I had so much fun,” he said, stumbling, swinging, dancing. “I feel so full of energy! I feel like singing! Give me a song, and I’ll sing it for you!” He spread his arms, as if to welcome the snow as it fell and fell and fell.

“Hmmm. I have to think,” I answered, even though the buzzing sensations, like a thousand bees swarming and stinging inside my head, made that difficult. “A song about some crazy guy jumping around in the snow,” I teased on, giggling. Looking at him, only one image flashed across my mind. “You could do ‘Singing in the rain’. But then again that’s about rain, not sn—.”

“AH! GREAT!” As if what I said charged him with renewed life, he suddenly leapt forward toward a tree, and grabbed hold of the trunk. “Rain can be snow!”

“What?” Apparently the alcohol slowed my ability to understand what he was saying and what he was up to. But soon enough I understood what he meant.

“I’m SINGING…” he began, completely out of tune, but completely unembarrassed in any way, “…in the SNOW, just SINGING in the SNOW…” With his hand on the trunk, he spun around the tree, and agilely bounced off it with his feet, landing with a soft thud in the snow. I stood there, watched this one-man acrobatic and musical act, and felt the ridiculousness of it all consume me with laughter once again. “What a glorious feeling, I’m happy again…” The heavens above rewarded his efforts with more and more snow, as if adding to the special effects. The wind blew, rushing with the branches above with rustling and sizzling sounds to accompany his song.

Alcohol can do many things, and one was to unleash that tame person inside of even the most introverted of people. Lowly at first, still unsure whether it was right, I started to hum along. The continuous tune and his singsong cheered me on, encouraging me to break loose, and break free, to forget all about embarrassment and making a fool of myself. “I—I’m sing—ing in the snow, just sing—ing in the snow…”

“Oh yeah! Sing it!” he shouted excitedly, “Sing it!” He dashed around, circling around me as I slowly picked up beat and confidence, with that sweet smile still so dazzling and clear in the muddled mist of the falling snow. “What a glorious feeling, I’m happy again…”

Our giant leaps left and right in the snow contributed to the rhythm, the occasional gusts of the wind synchronised the tone, while the slight creaking and rubbing sounds of branches joined in the beat. The shy crows, too, took part in the careless fun, with their lowly caw and the sound of their flapping wings. I felt an indescribable joy. Joy that rushed around and was accentuated by the already elevated feelings that the drinks I drowned down was having on me.

“I’m LAUGHING at clouds, so DARK up above…The SUN’S in my heart, and I’m READY for love…” Together we sang, this time in tune and in sync. Our voices echoed pleasantly all around us, bouncing back in the dense, translucent veil of falling snow. We had our faces turned upward, and arms spread wide open, embracing the new-found ecstasy in being somewhat tipsy, a little crazy, and a whole lot happy. “I’m SINGING in the SNOW, just SINGING in the SNOW…”

He skipped and hopped on the wonderfully white carpet, jumped and bumped around the trees surrounding us, like a hyperactive boy. With giggles I followed him, and together we seemed to be bringing the dark woods back to life again, to awaken it from a permanent state of soundless sleep under a wavering blanket of snow. “I'm singing and dancing in the SNOW, dancing and singing in the SNOW…”

Suddenly, unexpectedly, he fell. The singing stopped and the whole world went quiet, save for the muffled thump of his body as it hit the snow below. I, too, stopped singing. For a few moments I stood silently still.

“Uh…are you OK?” I asked, as I inched closer to his motionless body, spread-eagle plastered in the snowy surface, his face down, numb and lifeless. “Uh…are you alright?” I asked again, getting concerned, and bending down to get closer to him. Sadly the wind howled, and the crows croaked once more, this time sounding not like a song, but more like a sorrowful mourn. It was then I realised how cold it had become.

“Hey, what’s wrong? What happened?” I asked, as I gently rocked his body with my hand, hoping he would stir. A deadly silence echoed in my ears. The snow slapped my face, so forcefully, so suddenly, so painfully, it made the corners of my eyes tear.

He lay there, motionless and stiff. Even the white mists that gently wafted from his mouth each time it opened were no more. Snow was starting to collect on his jacket and the woollen hat on his head. I rocked him gently again, as I leaned closer to him, close to his ear, and softly said: “Come on, get up. Please, get up. This isn’t funny any more.”

“BUT THIS IS!”

Before I knew it, a smattering of snow sprayed across my face. A sudden shower, icy and dust-like, caressed my cheeks, lips and nose, like sand blowing at the beach on a windy day. I shook my head from side to side like a dog, trying to shake off the sprinklings of snow all over me. “ARRRGH! YOU!” I shouted, only to be answered with his unstoppable roaring laughter.

“Don’t you just love snow?” he managed to burst out between his laughs. I stared at him, lying there on his back now, red-cheeked in the white snow still, arms clutching around his stomach, his body and legs writhing from the cacophony of chuckles. And, crouched down over him, I could not but share in his joy again.

“Yeah! Yeah, how wonderful there’s all this snow.” My hand lurked behind my back and dug deep. With a sizeable portion cupped in my palms, my arm jolted forward, sending a spray across his face. “Isn’t it the best gift you can give to people?”

He had his mouth open when it came. And my ‘gift’ made him choke and sputter. “Oh, sneaky you!” he said, and with one tender shove with both his arms I lost my balance, and my bum sunk silently into the soft snow. Immediately I felt the damp and cold seep through and make my skin shudder slightly. With hands stretched out backwards, I only just managed to prevent myself falling further. Snow thawed all around my fingers.

“Oh, it’s not enough that you tripped and fell flat on your face. You just had to bring me down with you, didn’t you?” I joked, and yanked my head backward. The soft tickling flakes smoothly landing on my face felt so very fine, and seemed to douse the heated alcohol-induced sensations forever spreading on my glowing cheeks. The wild wind calmed to a listless whisper. I closed my eyes and lost myself in the magical moment.

“Incoming!” he suddenly shouted. Feeling snow dust splatter all over my hair and fall like grains of fine sand down my neck and back, I realised why. “I did warn you!” He grinned naughtily at me, sat there before me absolutely beaming with life and joy, and prepared to gather another round of ammunition from around him.

But I beat him to it, and flung a cluster of snow clenched between my fingers toward him. “Well, no warning from me!” The snow clung onto his dark jacket, adding to the beautiful traces of white sprinkles that were already there.

Not yet admitting defeat, he threw the round he had clumped in his palm, but I ducked sideways and managed to escape more or less unscathed. With a smile of glee and taunt, I armed myself again and pelted another round at him, as he did the same. Our weapons of mass foolishness smashed together in mid-air, producing a firework display that rained glitters and specks all over our bodies and amused faces. Our white breath looked like smoke dissipating from each round of snowball fired.

The air was crisp, dry, and filled with playful screams and heart-warming laughter. The trees above swayed their long, long arms, and sympathetically showered us with more and more and more snow.

A silent calm came over us after our intense exchange of snow. He smiled at me, and I smiled back, and seeing one another’s smiles it only made us smile even more. It was as if on the other person’s face we saw shared moments of priceless memories that he and I alone cherished, and would do so forever, and ever. He grinned at me again, and said: “I’m going to lie down now.”

Lowering my back down, and with arms outstretched, I did the same. Flakes clung to my lashes, dangling adventurously on the ends, making my vision become a tranquil blur. As if my arms were drunk with life of their own, they started to flap up and down, up and down. Unable to stop grinning, my legs joined in, and began to comb the snowy surface as well. He lay next to me, our faces separated by a dozen centimetres of divine, white carpeting, and started to imitate what I was doing.

Watching the flecks of snowflakes drift and dance in the air, drifting so elegantly and dancing so gracefully in the wind, I felt I was flying. Flying and soaring, higher and higher, with each and every flap and swing of my arms and legs. Magnificently celestial patterns started to emerge in the snow. We lay there, amid the falling snow, and became angels. The wind whispered, so softly, so soothingly, as if afraid to disturb the gifts the skies above offered. Yet, at the same time, the whisper was trying to tell the whole world that even after a wild, wild storm, there is a precious peace to be found.

“It’s nice, eh? Just lying here, watching the sky. Watching the snow come down. Almost like heaven, don’t you think?”

It was.

It really was.