First Snow of Winter

There are many dark things in this world, but I am so grateful for snow.  How blessedly beautiful it is, and lucky I am to be able to walk and run and in the park in the evening and in the morning and to see the way it glows from within, and softens the sound and the look of the world.  It crowns the trees and purifies the ground.  Perhaps one day, we will live in a world with little snow.  How heartbreakingly, wonderfully, wonderful to have had a day with a long walk with someone I love in the blurry white, to take refuge in an unplanned visit to a friend that lives on the edge of the park, to share hot chocolate and cookies, and to go back out into the white world, cold, but in no way alone.