Walking in a Winter Wonderland

 Today was such a glorious day.  Yesterday the world was carpeted so thickly with snow as I have never seen before and I know not exactly how many inches.  Eight? Twelve?  It was a beautiful sight.  We sat together at the windows beside the glowing Christmas tree, still decked in splendor, drinking our tea and eating a scone, and speaking in low voices, and every so often exclaiming at the sudden beauty of the storm.

Then  this morning what a world of wonder we awoke to! Cars half buried, drifts as high as our white picket fence which was still yet not as white as the snow, trees dancing with arms burrowed in deep, jeweled and glittering white sleeves.  In the afternoon we all bundled up to our noses and went wading through the snow, determined to do some sledding in the nearby park.  It was quite a bit of work toiling through the thick snow and over the piles in places that people had removed from streets and driveways, but the park was a place apart.  Only a few lovers of winter sports and the outdoors in general haunted the usually busy trails and slopes.  For the rest, it was still with the stillness that only comes with snow... the odd, isolated and muffling quality which snow gives to sounds, mingled with the fact that most beasts and men with any sense are holed up snugly somewhere and not out in the elements.

We did our sledding and passed the time of day with the few neighbors we passed, who, like ourselves, were sporting in the snow, with sleds or skis or snowshoes.  Twilight fell and the whole place grew more still, and the horizons were dimmer, and the light took on more and more of a blue tone.  Home we reluctantly turned, wet and cold, and from the depths of warm afghans immersed ourselves in a most beloved tale of which sometime I may write... but I was pierced again by the intense Beauty of it all, in the story and outdoors, and all set me longing again for the eucatastrophic, bound up in the person of the Author of existence, Who alone satisfies the deepest desires of man. And like all true kings, the sooner he comes, the better.

"Further up and further in!"