So Much Beauty

Tags

beauty, snow

So much be-aauty / you might have to close your eyes / and slowly open wide / and watch the sun rise. –The Weepies.

A few nights ago, Michigan left us one of the most spectacular mornings–a layer of ice followed by a blanket of white. No wind. The snow swathed the trees in a powder-sugar wonder-land.

I have seldom seen something so beautiful. I didn’t know where to look–at the shimmering, flocked trees–the multidimensional layers of white–the rising white hills, the white oak and ever-green trunks, the white sky. Coupled with my campus’s scattered lanterns–it was a veritable Narnia, a Lantern Waste.

Then Michigan decided to be just about, but not quite, freezing for a few days–and the snow turned into that moldable, poundable wonder that only occurs once or twice a year and my college became a teaming gallery of snow sculptures. Forts, igloos, dooms-day snow-men popped up everywhere–whimsical tributes to the child in all of us.

An Igloo–big enough for four people.

Dooms-day Snowmen.

A Fort. Of Sorts.

Snow Man.

Thus ever-white lapplands turned into something more like the statue-collection at the White Witch’s Castle. But the transformation was fitting. The old must fade before the new comes… for now we put up with the melting snow–the subsequent ice–the reoccurring frost… and with memories of the wonder’s we’ve seen–hope for Aslan and Spring.