“True, December can be raw and cold and its days sometimes are dark, but it is neither bleak nor colorless. Go outdoors soon after sun-up, which now comes late, and even on a lowering day you probably will find a frosty scene of dazzling beauty. If the day is clear it can be a world transformed by frost or snow, newly created, fragile as spun glass, ephemeral as the passing hour.”— American writer, journalist and naturalist Hal Borland (1900-1978), Twelve Moons of the Year, edited by Barbara Dodge Borland (1979)
Though the sun had not yet come up, I awoke this morning
to see a thin layer of snow on the ground. Quite a contrast with last winter,
when, a local weatherman said last night, snow did not arrive in New York City
until February 1.
Let’s see what happens this winter. Unlike when I was
a kid, I don’t look forward to snow—I have to shovel it and drive in it, rather
than digging out my sled and sliding down a hill in my neighborhood. But I also
know that a year with little to no snow in this part of the country is a sign
of something wrong.
(I took the image accompanying this post exactly four years ago today, in Overpeck County Park, not far from where I live in Bergen County, NJ. That December really was bleak, but for reasons unrelated to the landscape. It was, you might recall, when COVID-19 raged and fear stalked the land.)
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