By Ryan Lo
I feel the most calm when I am walking alone in the forest in winter. Dragging and pushing snow for every step I take and hearing the sounds of its crunch. The cold moves in and meets the warmth of my blood. I can’t turn back as the cold gives my body a high as the rush of warmth takes over my body. Every breath I take the freezing air enters my lungs and I exhale like a dragon. Admiring the forest as I push through, looking up at the skyscrapers of the glades, and then looking down at the fallen skyscrapers as the cold preserves it from rotting. The forest is quiet as everyone is asleep, allowing me to think with a clear mind as I adventure deeper and deeper into the forest. The only thing I could see that was living was blue jays flying through the forest. The longer I stay in the forest the longer for me to admire the white crystal forest.
Growing up I never had this deep relationship with the cold but completely the opposite. Hating the cold and loving the warmth because it was comforting for the body. My family would always blast the heater so I never felt uncomfortable during the winter months. It wasn’t until the recession hit where millions of families were struggling which included mine when we no longer can afford the heat allowing the freezing winter air to linger in my house. Where I would put on multiple layers to keep myself warm. This was the part in my life where I developed a deep relationship with the cold. Where I started to be comfortable around the cold incorporating it into my life using it as meditation and a challenge for the mind. I developed my tolerance by going outside in the middle of winter walking around with only a t-shirt as my body tells me that it’s too cold while I tell myself that I’m hot. People think I’m crazy to put my body to such extremes but I loved it.
This was part of my life where I started to explore different places in my neighborhood because I wanted to build my cold tolerance. I live in Queens, New York so there are a lot of parks and lakes around me, so I thought I might as well explore them while I’m outside. As a kid I didn’t care for nature, I was the kid I would litter everywhere, and learning about global warming in class was useless because it wasn’t my problem. But I started to adventure into these different types of parks and in particular, was the Cunningham Mountain Biking Trails which was a forest to me. As I continued walking deeper into the forest it got quieter as the sound of the cars in the road could no longer be heard. Once I got to the middle of the park it’s the most peaceful thing I have ever done in my life. As you walk through I notice things like how elegant the cold preserve’s wildlife freezing it in time. Like a tree preserved from rotting, a frozen lake having its moving water fixed in ice, or an active beehive being closed to the outside not knowing if anyone’s home. Everything stops and quiet, that the only thing you can hear is your breath and your heartbeat. This was when I formed a deep connection with this place and as a kid, I named it the crystal forest because of the beauty of the ice and snow formed around the trees.
As I grew older I slowly lost connection with that place and a forgotten distance memory. I went by my day when the news like Global warming melting the polar ice caps would show up. I didn’t think much of it because I didn’t care enough. One night I had a dream of me walking down the same childhood forest path in the winter. As the trees around me go up in flames and the skyscraper of the glades falls all around me. Watching as the air-caring snow slowly fills up with ashes then I say a blue raven being burnt alive in front of me. I woke up from the nightmare having tears in my eyes.
After having that nightmare I started to think of that experience as a kid walking through the crystal forest remembering the images of the beauty and the feeling of the cold air. Making the realization that global warming is a threat to the beautiful wildlife and a future that is increasingly warm. I fear that I will lose the connection with the cold as every passing year gets increasingly hot as it brings peace to me during hard times in my life. Today what I see on tv with breaking news Australia’s fires killed or harmed three billion animals watching the fire makes me feel hot, feeling the scorching fires as the heat makes me feel like it’s hard to breathe. Seeing images of burnt animals being pulled out of the fire gives flashbacks of the blue jay being burnt. This harsh reality of global warming has threatened the future of our climate. Increasing temperature has melted thousands of acres of ice, increasing sea level threatening the displacement of 1 billion people. We need a future that is increasingly cold to be able to preserve our planet like how the cold preserves that tree from rotting.
Nowadays when I walk back to the crystal forest I made it my life’s work to fight for the preservation of the place. To be able to be a part of the fight against global warming which was one of the core reasons for me becoming an Architect to be able to build a more sustainable planet so future generations can be able to experience the same feeling I had with the cold and nature. Where they don’t have to live in a world on fire not knowing the true beauty of the crystal forest.
