I love the way wet snow shows which way the wind was blowing during the time of the storm–the way white holds to the windward side of fenceposts and tree trunks.  How even dried thistle blooms are bearded with tufts of clinging snow. 

I love how the missing spots of a dilapidated barn roof show sudden and dark in patterns of old decay in the midst of the gleaming light and how the morning sun glistens and sparkles on the thousand icicles hanging from the ending edge of tin. 

I love how big brown bales the diameter of a man’s length break the blanket of white and how much they look like huge bites of frosted shredded wheat. 

I love how a plank fence plots patterns of light and shadow on the unrippled snow and how scallops of drifted banks facing the east glow blinding pink in reflected sun. 

I love how cows will leave the chilling cover and lay down on the trail of hay winding across the frozen pasture and how their breath steams, curls and disappears. 

I love how the fields and ponds, pasture and small ditch lie as one surface beneath and how a single trail of footsteps from the back door to the barn shows that someone cares for their livestock on a single digit morning.

But more than all that, I love knowing a God for whom all of that could be a coincidental beauty left in the wake of a winter storm and how, on the other hand, He could have placed each snowflake in just the place He wanted.