Snow Day!

White winter has thrown its lavish hush-heavy blanket over us in northern Ohio. Our little creek is a cold gray ribbon snaking through a reverence of exquisite lace fretwork. The cold is murderous, dedicated, and high-pitched - a gauntlet thrower, for sure. I accept the challenge, clamp on ear muffs and wind my wooly scarf up around my face. Only my eyes are visible. 

The music of boots-chomping-snow draws my attention groundward. There are enchantments there, dazzling wonders at my feet: heaps and piles of tiny glass stars! This geometric reckoning of quiet awe brings my heart to its knees.

Further down the ravine, I spy a wintry version of Hokusai's Great Wave and it's clawing, finger-y fractals. Glacial breath collars the cascade, but the falls insist, persist, outrun.  Life is resolute. Even in the dead of winter. It sings, It multiplies. 

Water + Earth + Air + Wind = Life.

After each shape-shifting globule, I pause, await the next.

             The sun stalls,

                              the trees sway.

                                                   the creek sings.   

Suddenly we are only

Music.  Movement.  Light.

We-ly. Three-ly.

One-ly.

When we tug at a single thing in nature, we find it attached to the rest of the world.
—John Muir

Winter solitude-

In a world of one colour

the sound of the wind.

- Matsuo Basho

When snow falls, nature listens.

- Antoinette van Kleeff