Sunlight rarely reaches here, but when it does it turns the skies to fire and the snow to a stinging yellow that burns my eyes like saltwater. My father talked about the ends of the earth and how God cast our sins away as far as the east is from the west, but the Bible never said anything about the North.
It should have.
Our church is seven people. We held our service outside one time and watched the hand of God paint luminescent DNA strands of green and purple across a deep blue sky. I cried that night and my tears froze on the fur that tried to shelter my freckled skin. My skin cracked in the cold like ice in warm water.
What do I miss?
I loved the crunch of my feet in the snow. The land would be perfectly still, not a drip or a sound or a movement anywhere, the entire tundra under the spell of our perpetual twilight. I would move one foot and just the sound of a boot on crusted snow would ring in my ears. I was so small, but even in that wild, lonely place, I could make a sound. I could leave a mark. I could look up at the sky and see love and approval in the shape of the stars.
Once I phoned my mother while walking in the squeaky dry snow of a cold Minnesota Winter. She had grown up in the frigid Canadian North. Over the phone she exclaimed, "are you walking in the snow? I recognize that sound!"