Warm southern air came creeping into our part of the country on Tuesday morning. Moving in the slow of night, coating all of long frozen weeds and branches with a thick coat of white that we could barely see in the first gray of dawn. It built up during those early hours, cresting at nearly an inch thick. An incredible spectacle of snow formed in slow motion and held so delicately.

It would have been trance-like had the sun somehow broken through, giving us a full view of that grandeur.

Instead, we had to settle for what little the fog would show us, a dimmed glowing under that great gray dome of the day. Even after the wind stirred, blowing away the hoarfrost in flurries shaped to the lee of each tree, the fog held on. All through the morning and even past noon, the gray refused to leave.

We stood earthbound, having no view of the vast blue that air travelers knew on that morning. And they flew a few miles above us, having no notion of what miracle had happened here on the ground.

Even when the wonders of this life come and pass in the fog of our seeing, it is our perceiving that gives them glory.

H. Arnett
1/15/10