Fresh Snow

     Walking Iten's Acres after a new snow is a delight--at least to this old man.  The snow has covered all the old footprints, the trees and posts have a new layer of white lace, the flurries as they swirl in the wind add a touch of beauty.  I often feel as if I am intruding on the peace, dirtying the new blanket laid down the night before.  My footprints reminders that I am an intruder on the scene.  I try not to look behind me at the wake of my destruction.  I suppose I should be as careful as the dogs and walk in my own footprints and limit my excursion to one path back and forth.  But, alas, I don't.
      I'll walk around the pond admiring the snow on the pine trees and looking for evidence of animal activity.  I love the gray of the old dead tree with its new white scarves.  I'm tempted to walk on the pond to see if it would hold me (fat chance), but I resist.  Even the dead tops of the cattails are beautiful in the snow.  Out back I walk all the way to the end of the property, through the trees, down the hill, along the paths listening to the wind play in my neighbor's pine woods.  Oboe or flute?  It's always changing. The deer love to take refuge in their covering.  The chickadees love the very back of the property and are usually ricocheting about, unafraid, filling me in on the latest Audubon news I guess, a perfect fit for a black and white world.  Someday I need to put a bench back here like the one by the pond and like the chair on the hill--a place where I can just sit and be drawn even more completely into the serenity.  My world is a black and white photograph of a place on earth that I love.  I don't even try to imagine what the wild area will look like come spring.  It is--in its own way--just as lovely now as then.  God is the consummate artist.  Whatever colors He is obliged to use, He uses exquisitely.  No offense, but I hope the new earth has days of freshly fallen snow on slate gray days.