SILOAM SPRINGS — I don’t know how to explain it, and I just can’t help it. It seems to happen to me every year at this time. When the windsstart to bring in that cool air from the north, I get this urge to head off across the prairies or into the mountains, far away from people and towns, and feel the cold wind on my face and listen to it as it blows across the tall prairie grasses or through the tree tops.

Why this happens, I don’t know. Perhaps the cooler air reminds me of past hunting trips and sitting on an overlook, watching for deer below. It was always amazing the wildlife I’d see while just sitting there quietly and watching and waiting. But, to be honest with you, that feeling was there long before I ever hunted deer, so it may go back even further to hiking and taking photographs in the mountains. It was always more pleasant to wear a jacket and be cool than to be walking in the desert heat, and when high enough to hear the cool winds in the pine trees, it was even better.

Maybe it comes from the year or so I spent in northern Minnesota. Paddling a canoe across a cold, clear lake, seeing the brilliant colors in the leaves and hearing the sound of that cold Canadian air in the tree tops was an unforgettable pleasure. I used to love walking in the woods and along the lakes even when temperatures fell below zero. Everything was so still, and the snow had this distinct crisp sound with each step.

I suppose it could go back to my truck driving years and sometimes being alone on the prairies or winding through the Rocky Mountains for hours without seeing a single house or another truck or car. Every once in a while, a dirt or gravel lane would leave the highway and extend off into the hills to - well, someplace in the distance I couldn’t see, miles from the highway.

Then again, there were those years in a patrol car.When not working on a particular a case, I got to patrol almost 900 square miles each night, and for the most part, I had them all to myself once the hour got late.

Perhaps it’s because I’ve spent so much of my life alone.

Why do I get this urge in the fall and early winter and not in the summer or spring? It would seem more logical to want to get out in the springtime, after being cooped up indoors for much of the winter.

Maybe it’s because I like to go outdoors when other folks are dreading the arrival of the cold and heading inside to stay close to the warmth of a fire. Maybe I like the solitude and loneliness of the colder and shorter days.

Maybe it’s even the challenge of facing the coming ice and snow. I don’t for sure know why.

I do know there’s nothing quite like watching the winter clouds move in across the prairie until things become dark and gray and almost fog-like as the snows begin to fall and blow through the prairie grass. All becomes quiet except for the soft voice of the wind, the ground is blanketed in white and everything and everyone else is far away. It’s peaceful. A fellow can think and not be distracted.

And lest you think I’m a bit crazy for enjoying the cold winds and the early snows of the high prairies, I’ll tell you that I do tire of winter and the cold. Come springtime, I’m always ready for warmer weather and sun-shine - in fact more so now, I think, than when I was younger.

But once summer has been here a while, I’m always ready, it seems, for those cool fall breezes, for a coat or jacket,and for time alone in the wilderness - time to clear my head of all the busyness of the warmer seasons, time to view God’s creation and think about less complicated things and maybe just nothing at all.

Now that cooler breezes are blowing and the leaves are beginning to turn, the urge is back. It’s time for my annual pilgrimage to feel the comingof the cold, to hear the sound of winter winds, to walk in the rain and maybe even the snow. Yes, it’s time to feel touch of the coming cold on my face. It’s time to spend at least a little time away where it’s quiet and where one can be alone with his maker and enjoy his creation.

- Randy Moll is editor for the Gentry Courier-Journal.

Opinion, Pages 4 on 10/07/2009

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