Bro Richard Hendrick OFM Cap has written a beautiful poem about how to enjoy a winter walk in nature and especially in the woods. The following is an extract from that poem and I hope you find it enjoyable:

A Meditation:

When you walk in the woods, do so at their pace. Not yours.

Pause before you enter their embrace, and breathe deep.

Slow down to their ancient pace of root, and branch, and story.

Then, with a bow, enter; and allow their cathedral coolness to enfold you,

and their greened light to anoint you with sylvan sacrament

of stained-glass dappling; and your healing will begin.

Listen long enough and they will teach you their tongue:

words of wood, and weather, and water, united in one song of praise that began

with the first Divinely led step into the dance of inter-breathing

that you have forgotten how to sing until now.

Touching their great slowness, be reborn in their wisdom that promises,

for every Winter a Spring, and roots deep enough to outlast any Summer drought

until Autumn’s coolness comes.

When you walk in the woods, do so at their pace. Not yours.