A series of successive weather fronts have moved across the Dakotas, bringing snowfall about twice a week to Minnesota. The temperature has remained below freezing, so the snow has been light, each front leaving behind an inch or so. Snow piles on the Mountain Ash berry clusters, and leaves the bird feeder looking jaunty.
The snow isn’t difficult to shovel, the exercise is bracing, and the weather after the front has moved through is always delightful: bright sunshine, blue skies.
Friends who live in southern regions are dubious. Snow, for them, is apparently dreaded, something to be avoided. I have never understood this attitude, and assume it is the result of excessive exposure to heat. We know what heat does to an egg, so it takes little imagination to know what it does to otherwise healthy brains.
The view outside my office window has been transformed from autumn to winter, the chickadees and goldfinches visiting the pine tree send little puffs of fluffy snow off into the air as they land.
Snow is a metaphor for purity, and a reminder that beauty is never neutral, but dangerous.
(Keen eyes will notice the dates on the photos are from earlier years, but the view has been the same.)