BEAUTIES OF SNOW

      Snow is a nuisance, and dangerous.  But it also has several beauties, day and night, that we have the God-given ability to appreciate.  

     Snow falling gently, without any sound, is a unique beauty in itself.  And with the help of outdoor lights, falling snow illuminates the night.  

     Day or night, visibility shrinks dramatically during a snowfall, sounds are muffled and the whole landscape becomes charming in an unending, white blanket of fresh snow.  And falling snow traces every deciduous limb and twig, and needled bough in woods, fields and lawns. 

     In sunlight, after a snowfall, we see pristine snow covers everything, and enhances the grays and browns of deciduous tree and shrub bark, the green needles of conifers and the beige of tall, dead weeds and grasses.  Sunny, blue skies and snow-buried landscapes are beautiful in a new, but temporary way.   

     At night, after a snowfall, when the sky is wall to wall clouds, the charming, snow-blanketed landscape is almost as bright as day because outdoor lights illuminate those clouds and the snow on the ground.  Trees, shrubbery, weeds and grasses are attractively silhouetted before the clouds and snow cover.  Then I see cottontail rabbits hopping silhouetted across snow-covered lawns, and little groups of silhouetted white-tailed deer and flocks of Canada geese feeding in the fields at dusk and into the night.  Seeing those creatures adds to the unique beauty of snow-covered landscapes at night.   

     Once, I saw a wintering flock of airborne mallard ducks speeding before a sunset and over harvested cornfields.  Suddenly, they turned into the wind for flight control and parachuted down to a field, disappearing into pink-tinged, drifting snow, and reappearing, as they fluttered to the snow cover to shovel up corn kernels in the snow.  There they stayed until after dark to feed on corn.

     The rising moon and moonlight at night have their own unique beauties on snow blankets on clear nights, again making the night other-worldly, and almost as bright as day.  I like seeing the moon rising, large and pale-orange, above the eastern horizon and climbing skyward behind a stand of trees, as the Earth turns on its axis.  The moon gets whiter and seems a bit smaller as it ascends and casts its glow across snowy fields, woods and lawns.  Every branch and twig is silhouetted black by the moonlight and its shadow is cast across the snow.  Those shadows move as the Earth continues to turn about one thousand miles an hour.  

     Snow on deciduous twigs and coniferous needles melts during warm afternoons, but refreezes into transparent, sparkling icicles, that grow larger and longer with each succeeding thaw and freeze.  Those lovely, innumerable icicles add to the beauty of snow on trees.  

     Snow and icicles are charming when illuminated by moonlight or outdoor lights.  Fortunately, snow and ice are perishable in temperatures above 32 degrees.  But we can enjoy those fleeting parts of nature while we can.     

      

     

            

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