For most of last week our temperature didn’t get above freezing. No surprise, I hate the cold, especially when accompanied by Wyoming’s vicious wind. Despite this, once I ignore the fact that I can’t feel my toes, and I ignore the discomfort of needing to go to the bathroom but deciding that it just isn’t worth expending the energy and time to remove THAT many clothes in order to use the grocery store restroom, the fact remains that winter’s cold does have a kind of brutal beauty.
For example, I love the way brand new snow glitters. Tiny points of light wink and sparkle on bare branches and sleeping lawns. At times, when it’s far below zero, the air itself shimmers magically. For just a minute at least, sharp edges are softened and my world is clean and fresh and somehow simple.
I admire the physics and science involved in icicles. Water captured in mid drip, often in labored positions and gnarled, anguished shapes, testaments of powerful wind and commanding cold.
Though frightening and disorienting, I am intrigued with the way dust-fine snow snakes across the road in ever changing patterns during a ground blizzard. It’s a mesmerizing dance that polishes the road to a shiny slickness and gives me the illusion that I’m not moving though my speedometer assures me I am. My fascination increases when the sky above is pure, hopeful blue while anything more than a mere few feet in front of me is only a guess. Somehow in those moments the storm and I merge into one being, both of us pumped with adrenaline and relying on something beyond ourselves for redemption.
While I’m not fond of ‘snowflakes that stay on my nose and my lashes’, I do enjoy watching from my living room window as large, downy flakes fall on a calm afternoon, or even when a witchy wind whines and screeches around my eves, pelting windows and walls with a formidable onslaught. I appreciate a rampaging winter storm most while I am inside with those I love. I am safe. I am warm. I am reminded of my blessings and of the Hand who delivers me from trouble and peril.
