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The world is dressed in diamonds. The branches of the bald cypress are draped one to another with sparkling gossamer hairs, glistening like spiderwebs in the dew. Leaf buds are encased in transparent mirrors, glinting coded signals in the sunlight.
Nothing looks made of what it is. Earth, wood, water, even the coil of old fencing wire - today it is all blown glass, silver, and cut crystals. Light flashes in every clearest color from frozen prisms in the tree tops. It’s like stepping into a fairytale set dressed by artists of the finest skill and imagination, but it’s real, and dangerous, and so much more perfect. 
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Our lone duck swims in contented circles against the pond's low current, though the cold has set icicles dropping from her feathers. From a frozen branch hangs the ice-crusted chrysalis of a promethea silkmoth. Deep within a curl of leaves, secured with sturdy threads, encased in coldest glass, sleeps a tiny worm, dreaming of unfurled accordion wings.
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Everything in nature called destruction must be creation - a change from beauty to beauty.
- My First Summer in the Sierra, John Muir
With a series of cracks and a thunder a tree splits under the weight of the ice, and tumbles down the hill, pulling branches and brush with it. The wind blows a palmful of glitter against our cherry faces, then darts around to tug at cold ears and dust my hair with dampening sparks. The sunlight turns its flashing eyes towards the hilltops, then the white rooftops, then gazes back across the glinting pastures, scattering rainbow lights between each cloud wisp blink. And we, we smile at the smoke that curls from the chimney of a powerless house, and continue our wander through this world of shattered diamonds.
 | -Tyler Knott Gregson |
 | The new year has arrived in sunshine. Young henbit and onion grass have forced their new leaves above a covering of bald cypress fronds here on the creek bank. A lone honeybee has awoken in the warmth, and is eagerly searching the deadnettle buds for the few fully opened blooms. Glossy new grass and spider threads tremble in the breeze and sunlight, and a crowd of tiny, iridescent-winged gnats hover close to earth. The ground is alive and rippling with light.
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A single red cedar (Juniperus virginiana) is across the creek, small and shaped like a Christmas tree from a picture book, on a bank covered in silvery deciduous brush. There's a little grove of slender mimosas (Albizia julibrissin) next to it, smooth-barked and almost white, with a chaotic crown of pale seed pods, papery little adornments that never stop their movement and barely audible chatter. The trees' reflection in the creek is almost perfect - the bright white of the trunks against the algae-covered dark of the creek bed. Their image is only disrupted by a constant gentle zigzag of ripples that makes them look rather like they're in a movie, being fast-forwarded though.
...Beyond all towers strong and high, / Beyond all mountains steep,
Above all shadows rides the Sun...
-J. R. R. Tolkien, Return of the King
A bonfire of the creek-bank brush is hissing out a steady spiral of palest blue smoke, casting bizarre and warbling shadows across the grass, the sort of shadows that a tank of water sometimes makes when light shines through, constantly moving and hardly there. The world cannot stay still in this thoughtful spot. It is so close to silent, gentle, and so very calm on the surface.
Don't the question beg an answer?/ Don't the song beg a dancer?
- Marc Scibillia, More to This
But if you listen, all around there are whisperings of grand plans and delight. The earth is growing in a conspiratorial glee, building strength, gaining energy. Slowly, in the light winds and beamish light, it's beginning to dance.
...it is only rarely that we realize, like a vision of the heavens filled
with a chorus of giants, the primeval duty of Praise.
- G. K. Chesterton, Chaucer
