In the early morning hours, long before daylight, the world outside my window is frozen, white, silent, and beautiful. The only lights come from neighbors’ houses and from the layer of snow which lies inches deep on the ground. Snow not only magically changes a wintry landscape, it muffles sound. Have you noticed that? Not that there’s anything to hear: no cars are going past. The squirrels are wisely tucked up in a tree, wrapped in the warmth of their tails, and the birds are probably snuggled together in feathery communion inside the honeysuckle on the back fence. (Although I did see a wren yesterday scoot under my storage building.)
The temperature hasn’t been above freezing for four or five days and we in northwest Arkansas are looking at our white world and marveling. We aren’t used to this much snow, this early, and for cold that lasts this long! Going to work can be a challenge but being inside the house for, lo! these many days has challenges of its own. I am tempted to re-read John Greenleaf Whittier’s “Snowbound“.
Snow gives me a chance to enjoy the comfort of a warm house, a warm fire, a companionable dog, and a cup of hot coffee, shared with my neighbor, Peg. Snow outside, slick streets that keep me inside, and I am, as Emerson said, “Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed in a tumultuous privacy of storm.”
The picture I posted this morning fans the spark of a mystery glowing somewhere in the dark depths of my writer’s brain. Don’t you think it would fit right into a plot for a good “Whodunit?” And, by the way, being snowbound is the perfect time to sit in front of the computer and create another of those cozies.
Snowlight outside and inside, Christmas tree lights. Contrasts: darkness against light, warmth against cold. What else can I do but enjoy it? The Lord sends the seasons and each one has a beauty of its own. This morning, before the sun comes up, the world would be dark if it were not for a story beginning to take shape in my mind and, of course, the quiet and beautiful snowlight.
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