As I sit in my snug house (well, as snug as it can be considering it has terrible windows and leaky doors) tonight, we are under a winter storm warning with a possibility of 6 to 10 inches of snow in the next 24 hours.  It has been raining with temps in the mid-30’s for several hours.  In the high country, only a few miles and a thousand feet in elevation away from us, it has been snowing instead of raining.  15 to 20 inches of snow will fall in the foothills and up into the mountains.  Looking outside, even though it’s dark and approaching bedtime for most of us, I see the telltale signs of the snow to come.  The sky is orange from the streetlights.  The wind has a damp, sharp-toothed bite as it scrapes across my bare arms, just shy of leaving a sheen of ice as it goes.

Those that know me know that this is just about as close to heaven as I can get.  I’ve been waiting for the first Colorado snowfall since I got here in July.  I am a winter creature.  I love the freshness and clarity of winter air, the sharpness of it, the way the sky gets so blue that it almost hurts your eyes.  I look at a world covered in white, and wonder at the way everything turns soft and clean.  While others see the sleeping trees as dead, and the lack of vegetation as despair, I marvel at the clarity of the view, the way the horses’ coats steam in the sun on a cold day, the way the leaves lay like a colorful, artful quilt when I look through a stand of wood.  I see the hawk, feathers puffed against the chilly air, its eyes sharp as it searches for its lunch among the frosted blades of grass in a field.  I would love to be that hawk, swooping through the frozen air.

I am more likely to be found outside in the winter than in the summer.  Every winter day, with its cold nibbles at my cheeks, its bare landscape resting in preparation for a colorful spring, brings me a joy I have never been able to explain.

Winter is when I come alive.  Winter is when I feel healthy.  Having moved to a place where winter comes earlier, and stays later, suits me just fine.

I wonder, when I wake up tomorrow, what I will see.  I hope it’s something like this.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 25th, 2011 at 8:44 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.