When I woke up this morning and looked out the window I exclaimed

Oh S-NO-W!

The ground is white as far as my eye can see and more snow continues to fall. This heralds the beginning of my least favorite season of the year. I had hoped for a mid-November warmup but the weather forecast looks like winter is here at least for a week or so. Snow is in the forecast every day this week.

But still, despite my dislike for some of the inconveniences of the season, my heart soars a little at the beauty of it all. How can I stay grumpy when the world is so gloriously frosted with this fresh icing of snow?

First Snow

The snow
began here
this morning and all day
continued, its white
rhetoric everywhere
calling us back to why, how,
whence such beauty and what
the meaning; such
an oracular fever! flowing
past windows, an energy it seemed
would never ebb, never settle
less than lovely! and only now,
deep into night,
it has finally ended.
The silence
is immense,
and the heavens still hold
a million candles; nowhere
the familiar things:
stars, the moon,
the darkness we expect
and nightly turn from. Trees
glitter like castles
of ribbons, the broad fields
smolder with light, a passing
creekbed lies
heaped with shining hills;
and though the questions
that have assailed us all day
remain – not a single
answer has been found –
walking out now
into the silence and the light
under the trees,
and through the fields,
feels like one

   — Mary Oliver

Life Goes On

Meanwhile life goes on. The birds have been busy at the feeders this morning. And Gracie has been glued to the window watching them. When she gets really excited her tail twitches back and forth, her butt wiggles, and she actually leapt at the window once and bumped her nose on it.

Jon has been feeding a squirrel a few peanuts each day out on the deck and Gracie gets really excited watching the squirrel. She makes little mewling sounds, wiggles all over, and fights the urge to leap at the squirrel. The cheeky squirrel seems to understand that she cannot get at it and sometimes comes right up to the deck window and looks in at her. I am thankful that the two cannot get at one another, because I’m pretty sure that the squirrel would win any battle they got into.

The snow has changed my plans for the day. (I know that the weather forecast told me that it would snow today, I just didn’t want to believe it, or I held out hope that the weather forecast was wrong.) Perhaps I’ll dig out my winter boots and take a walk in the fresh snow this afternoon. But mostly I now plan to read and work on my photo book project today.

What are your plans for this snowy November day?

May you walk in beauty.