My new Nordic skis, still encased in factory wax, are leaning against the wall like Egyptian sarcophagi in a museum. I cannot strip them down for action until the first snow, but I wonder if they will carry me across thousands of pristine miles and countless soul-silvering adventures the way my World Cup Red Cheetahs did. I am a physical person. My skis must survive the physical world that ignites my blood and awakens a million years of evolution in my DNA. I am a thinking person. Said skis must be worthy of sacred journeys of the mind where faithful ideals and the way stations of memory converge. I am a spiritual person. They must reach escape velocity to give my soul wings. That’s my trinity of quests – the Holy Grail of winters that deliver colossal joy and flaunt energy across golden days and spangled nights.

Once, I thought winter was down-time, a season you spent indoors or on stressful commutes over icy streets. Now I know it’s a time to explore behind the curtain as the Earth expunges wounds and heals itself. Nature conducts the drill with the life-and-death precision of a falling thermometer. The Creatures of Choice and the Denizens of Will who hunt each other or prey upon the rooted fruits of forests and fields must become shut-ins for a season. They may burrow or nest or den or soar on swift wings like arrows toward the equator. This while Nature swathes the land in layer upon layer of embalming snow, winter’s winding sheet.

Into that necropolis I come with reverence for sleeping mummies. I skinny ski not into exile but into a pristine paradise of holy white runners across blazing fields of diamonds and down the soaring naves of arboreal cathedrals. It thrills my soul, electrifies my senses and lights the inner furnace that keeps me warm. Not for everyone, I know. Which – if you’ll allow me an impertinence – makes the solitude and serenity all the better for a lone celebrant like moi.

But I welcome you – INVITE you – to join me this season right here in this Sullygram to experience a little of that. And should our shadows become silhouettes over some nether trail and then rosy-cheeked skiers face-to-face on a magical eve, we will share some miracles.

If all of that sounds like a lonely way to spend winter, I must’ve explained it wrong. It’s a cure for loneliness. It’s discovering your place in life and in the universe. Many of you tell me about your loneliness and frustration, and I’m sorry for that. But the truth is that about one-third of all people in the United States live alone, almost double what it was in 1970. The thing is, living alone doesn’t make you lonely; just as living with others doesn’t make you not lonely.

Tears me up to read about the emptiness some people feel in and out of companionship. We are obsessively curious about other people’s connections in order to judge our own. Your candor is appreciated, and I try likewise to answer questions about my life just as honestly no matter how personal, including the persistent am I married, do I live with someone, etc. But it bothers me when people think my personal answers might fit them. I used to say that half of what women know about men’s motivations don’t fit me. It’s a throw-away line, but my reactions are often quite the opposite of the way most males react.

I’ve spent over half my life in quarters with others, and I was much more alone for most of that than I ever was living independently. Proximity with people can actually smother who you are and diminish your moments of truth and authenticity. I much prefer reclusiveness and the freedom to visit others or have them visit me. And the mate question? Never say never. I know what kind of woman I could live with full-time, and what kind I could not. Not making someone happy would make me unhappy. But that is not the same as a tardy once-in-a-lifetime adult connection that lights up every hormone and mature insight collectively in your heart, mind, body and soul. It almost never happens, and if it does, it will disrupt the compromises and resignations you made getting to your settled life. Because whatever is imprinted core deep on your radar will resonate with a shock of recognition and that banished dream will come storming back like an uncashed lottery ticket.

Flowers that bloom in winter are rare. Then again, winter is my thing. When just such impossible possibilities as what I describe above blindsided me, I had to learn that dreams can hold you hostage. And that’s where I recognize the one-way street to personal extinction too many of you write about in sharing your loneliness, if you will allow me to circle back to that theme. I have no one-size-fits-all solution for you except to understand the bridge on which you are trapped. You cannot go back, and you cannot move forward. You are caught in a partial metamorphosis from which no butterfly will emerge. But to remain suspended by the rules of flight in a caterpillar world is one mistake you can avoid. By all means, cherish and cultivate your highest dreams, because they will let the best you survive; but accept your earthbound prerogatives. In my case, independence lies in recognizing that the next best thing to uniting with a natural soulmate is simply knowing that it is possible. Dreams and reality are not mutually exclusive. Knowledge, as they say, is everything; and that truth is a blueprint that never has to be doubted in my life – or yours – again.

Pictures below…

Thomas "Sully" Sullivan