The White Mountains National Forest, New Hampshire

Snowflakes are loud on a windless winter morning, as the sky shakes downy flakes from feather pillow clouds. They are tinkling on the glassy, frozen surface of the pond in front of me, cracking as hundreds of thousands of them land on the frozen snow in unison. Not even a cackle of a gray jay breaks the silence; it’s as if the forest is pausing.

The previous day had been grueling. My friend and I slogged up a muddy, slushy path through a pine forest. We paused at the summit of a bald mountaintop. There was no grand sweeping view of the Appalachian Mountains, only a narrow glimpse of more twisted pines, fading into the distance. The descent into Cater Notch, where we spent the night, was treacherous. The rocks on the trail were coated with ice, and the path was occasionally obscured by snow. We half-crawled, half-fell down the winding, steep trail all the way to the bottom. Yet, when I pulled my aching frame out of my sleeping bag in the morning and beheld the falling snow, it took my breath away and reminded me why New Hampshire’s White Mountain National Forest is my escape from reality.

The park isn’t a place of bison, elk, or grizzlies. The beauty here is subtle, fragile, and difficult to appreciate. Under the riverbanks, dripping streams have frozen into sensual forms. Waterfalls are suspended in time; ice forms cling to the dark rock. Delicate mosses hang from the bare tree branches like green spider webs. The unseen denizens of the forest make patterns in the fresh snow. The air is scented with the cloying sweet aroma of the pine forest. And there is nothing like the sound of the falling snow.

No other place in the U.S. makes me feel at peace the way the White Mountains do. Returning to the forest is like putting on an old, familiar coat. Outside troubles fade away, leaving only stillness.

—Christopher Linder

Christopher Linder is a researcher at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute on Cape Cod.