It seems odd I am posting this now as the snow is melting outside, but 1) I wrote this on our trip home through a LOT of snow in between winter storms, and 2) I am sad to see the snow melt. Snow makes me smile. It makes my assistant a bit crazy. He has a great window in his office. When I walk in and see the snow falling so peacefully outside his window I tend to forget why I'm there for the moment and smile glassy-eyed at the beautiful flakes. David has gotten used to this, and merely shakes his head until I return to the present.
I love winter. During the winter it should snow. Snow is one of God's greatest inventions. It beautifully covers the earth, blanketing the land in quiet and peace. There is a beautiful starkness in a winter landscape, the bare trees and brown grasses pushing through the white. The white of the snow filtering through the brown of bare branches and the green of fir and pine cause the mountains to look purple up close and blue in the distance. Driving through a snowy landscape you can believe in peace.
Smoke rises from a chimney, curling in the wind. The clouds blend into the slate colored sky reflecting the starkness of the ground. There is even beauty in the seemingly endless grey. Light reflects, bouncing from snowy ground to silver grey clouds, so that, even at 3:00 on a December day, it is not dark.
There's more to winter than snow. (Although that is my favorite part.) In winter the whole world is pregnant. Hopes and dreams are wrapped in cottony softness. Winter is the gestation period for the seeds lying dormant under that warm blanket of snow. All the promise of the future is wrapped in winter. In some cases buds are already on the trees, waiting for the freeze and the thaw. Just like people need sleep to rejuvinate, so too the earth in order to bloom anew.
So while many celebrate the January thaw, I look at it with some saddness and wait longingly for the snow to return.
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