February 2021

I woke this morning and the world was white.  From the pale, luminous opacity of the cloudy sky to the soft, glowing blanket on the earth, it's as though the world has become a de-saturated photograph, a vintage world of black and white.

White is not a mere absence of color; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black. God paints in many colors; but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white.

 - G. K. Chesterton

Now it's nearing evening, the white sky has turned a dappled blue, and the slanting light has turned the snow on the pasture above me to the gentlest blush of pink.  But my Thoughtful Spot remains, in its shadowed little hollow, a magical world of dark and light.  There is so much life in this little corner of the world that I never would have noticed without this snowfall.  Among the drooping frozen grasses miniature songbird footprints scamper about in happy disarray, I envy their light-footedness, as they leave the tiniest of impressions in the snow, and I trudge through, digging my boots through a layer of ice beneath the snow to keep from slipping.  Wild turkeys have passed by this way too, a straight and plodding trail of three-toed tracks that seem giant beside the dainty prints of cardinals and sparrows and juncos. There are the delicate tracks of a fox, the hand prints of a racoon, and a crowd of coyote tracks are just around the corner.

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I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields that it kisses them so gently?  And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, 'Go to sleep darlings, till the summer comes again.'

 - Lewis Carroll

As long shadows grow and the sun begins to set on this downy white world, a splash of color fills the sky.  Azalea red, daffodil yellow, and bright peony pink.  It's spring in a sunset, bidding farewell to this peaceful, sleepy winter of a day.