Keeping the White Dress

Golden daffodils are popping up through the remaining hillocks of sparkling snow. Young girls in Easter dresses gambol about seeking colored eggs among green blades of grass. The sun warms the skin and the heart with the hopes of spring. Somewhere. Somewhere much more southerly.

Here the tiny snow crystals fall — as they have been falling steadily throughout the last eighteen hours. The delicate white flakes blanket the world in another layer of shimmering lace and tug at my truck’s tires like velvet. Mother Nature has decided to keep her white dress.

Yesterday the birds sang, the sun shone brightly in the cerulean sky, and it felt like spring was truly coming. Today I am brushing snow from the truck and scraping ice off of its lights once again.

Spring comes slowly, sometimes stubbornly here. Two weeks ago the birds wheeled and dipped and darted. Water dripped from eaves. Two little healthy avians alit atop the leading branch of a small spruce, using the stiff needles as ladder rungs to walk up and down, around the conifer’s leader and each other. One flitted away but the female hung out for a bit to allow me to snap some photos. Then, she too flew off to continue her aerial dance, singing a rapid vibrato chirp. Their perky excitement lifted my own heart. Now, sounds are hushed by the veil of white. Icicles point downwards, and the snow brume blurs the boundary between the hilltops and the muted sky.

Perhaps some years Mother Nature is just not ready to select her garb from the the browns and dirty yellows of snow- and ice-melt in her closet. Pristine pretty white makes the world look so much more aesthetically appealing. The trade-off for us is more snowfall, and even more…