The Sound of Winter, Scent of Snow

The long white season has arrived and it's here to stay this time - not just dropping in for tea or plunking itself into a Morris chair for the afternoon with a stack of books and a good reading lamp.  Thermal underwear and toque, anyone? Boots, parka, mittens and snowshoes?

Winter writes its own words and music, sings the score in a hollow timbre that rises and falls on snowbound streets and parks, across hills, woodlands and fields, and a thousand and one other places deemed too desolate for attention, but wonderfully alive in their frozen shapes and textures.

Sometimes, the best thing one can do is be silent and let the season speak or sing for itself - just turn the doddering artist/scribe loose in the white stuff and see what she gets up to without giving in to the compelling tug to describe it all in words.  How does one describe the scent of fresh snow and spruce needles anyway?

The season is infinitely more tuneful and eloquent than this old woman with her camera and notebook, and it knows best how to work with these artful crystals, these frozen bits of aromatic greenery. For all the winters she has been wandering the earth, every winter is something new and beguiling.