The snow storm

So long I have not posted.  I wrote the following in an email to a fellow artist friend of mine this morning and his reaction to it inspired me to post it on my blog.

This time yesterday, the snow storm was a cranky child, sputtering one moment, sulking the next. As the day wore on, she sat in the corner and moaned continuously, her voice rising to a steady wail layer upon layer, covering all in its path.  With the dawn of today, the aftermath of the tantrum lay over the land in brilliance. The forest recreated in a frosty bath of white, sparkling against a porcelain blue sky, looked down upon by a sun that ran and hid from the child the day before.

Every branch, every twig, every shape of every size is burdened by the wet, white fallout of the storm. Evergreens normally holding their arms wide and swaying in the wind, are draped and sagging as though covered in thick wet bath towels left on hooks to dry.  Bushes and young trees, still supple in their youth, are bent double with the weight, threatening to break from the task.

The cold air, barely of voting age, keeps shadowed corners in frozen suspension. The sun seeks all places offered to its face and slowly warms the winter-brown trees, pushing the snow from slender twigs and hurling it to the forest floor. The tallest bits fall, colliding, sliding and grabbing twigs and branches and snow below pushing it  to the ground below in countless mini tantrums like so many minute diamonds cast from the hand of a wealthy merchant.  Under the rooftop snow, the sun's power is multiplied, slowly, invisibly until rivers of water fall from the eaves in a gymnastic display of freezing, thawing, dripping.  Spikes of crystal magic add to the tableaux of this winter morning.

Below the trees the ground is blanketed to the depths of the forest and beyond, its smoothness broken by mysterious but alluring shapes which suddenly come alive as the warmth of the day awakens them just enough to spring forward in freedom, shaking off the burden of the night.

We watch the scene unfold.  We want to be in it but not to disturb it, not to mar this perfection with our boots so we watch from windows and doors, marveling in this breathless beauty, grateful for the gift left by the storming child.