I went to the bigger city yesterday. A golf show was calling Charlie’s name; the Container Store whispered mine.  It had snowed overnight. Not a lot, but heavy and wet, coating everything with a thick layer. Charlie picked me up just as the first session of a new series of Authentically You Community Coaching Circles ended, so I was feeling mellow and very centered, and we took off, passing along lovely rural roadside en route to traffic and big city buildings.

And I’m grateful we left when we did, when the snow still lay heavy upon the trees, and the shrubs, and the weeds, and the ground. I was struck by how it washed everything clean. It hid the dullness of winter foliage. On second thought, I think it quickens and brightens it, forcing it into stark relief against the blinding, pristine whiteness.

It was a show-stopper. I couldn’t stop looking and, eventually, requested the car stop alongside a stand of brush that, on a normal day, wouldn’t have attracted a second glance. But today wasn’t a normal day.

And so I’ve rolled around in my head the right words to capture the reason I was so struck by the juxtaposition of dark and light, of white and black, of new and old. And I think, maybe, this captures it:  by removing the color from the landscape, nature forced me to see form and function. It fine tuned my vision enough to notice the complexity of all those branching limbs, of those seed pods capped with snow, of the strength and beauty of contorted trunks deeper within the trees. They’re always there, with or without snow. Today, I’m grateful for the snow’s artistry.