The moment I spied the cedar wardrobe across the jumbled yard sale, I had to get closer. I clambered over a pile of boxes and pressed my cheek against the door, breathing the soft sweet wood smell. When I held my breath, I could hear a low murmur calling me.

I’m pretty sure that this wardrobe is just like the one in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, where the whirling snow of a secret land lay so close, back behind the long wool coats still musty from last winter. When I reach back inside to see if this place is there, it usually isn’t, but then it was that way in the story. Maybe I have to climb inside, and not just reach my arm tentatively through.

It doesn’t matter anyway, because I don’t have to feel the snowflakes on my face to know they are there. I can hear the tinkle of bells fading into the night as the sleigh slides swiftly away. I can taste winter air, tangy and sparkling on my tongue. I can smell the dark pine that has grown for a hundred years just a few yards ahead. If I close my eyes and rest my hands against the smooth cedar, I can climb onto that sleigh and speed across the purple-shadowed snow with only a fur muff to warm my tingling fingers.

My friends think I’ve gotten a few too many moth balls in my own clothes closet. My sister says the whistle of winter wind in my ears is just the forgotten memory of my own father’s cedar wardrobe. But I’m pretty sure it’s more than that, because even now, I can hear the wardrobe’s gentle voice, a bittersweet fudge warm and bubbling around the edges. I can see my father gently spooning chocolate across a copper pan, holding out a bit for me to taste even before I’d shaken off the snow of that mysterious place.

Sometimes a dark Vermont night has this same magic. It was just such a night some eight years ago when I heard the voice of spirit inviting me to come live in Vermont. That soft voice was a lot like the one of the wardrobe, and maybe they’re the same anyway. I did, of course, come to live here, but I don’t usually tell this story about why. It’s so much easier to mumble about change of lifestyle and avoid complicated explanations. But the truth is, it was that one night that did it for me. I was convinced then that Vermont would bring me all the magic I need. And although some days are tired and gray, other days I open the wardrobe door and feel a little breath of frost against my cheeks.

Copyright January, 1999

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