It’s quite all white

This morning unseasonably bitter cold brought frost, fog, hoarfrost, haze and/or low clouds. Behind and  through the mist the sun was a pure white circle. Trees encased in white looked like escapees from a fairyland. It was magical and a little disconcerting to any of us conditioned over the years to seeing either thicker clouds or a yellow sun. All in all, nature delivered a beautiful early Christmas present today.

snow-covered fields and frost coated trees

Photo by J. Harrington

Yesterday we enjoyed a different kind of present. A large flock of tundra swans, white against pale gray clouds, flew past the windows. Swans emerging from clouds or silhouetted against them are an occasional winter delight in our  area. There’s a large flock or several smaller ones that  overwinter on the St. Croix river’s open waters. From time to time we see them doing a fly-by as they head for one of the neighborhood’s harvested corn fields to glean what’s left.

Since the dogs seem to be indifferent to the aesthetics of winter’s displays of white on white, they’re just looking forward to the return of seasonable, or above, temperatures during their daily walks. Putting on boots is a lot of trouble and feels weird so we avoid that unless it’s really, really, polar vortex cold. But that doesn’t mean it’s comfortable walking in the snow or on the ice at road’s edge.

Snow White

Katherine Riegel

I dreamt I woke in winter—
even the river
silent, its tongue caught mid-
sentence, like mine
when someone looks at me
too closely. It had been years

since I understood winter
so well I knew it to be inside
my own bone-cage, since I had
smelled that kind of white.

White of the frozen rabbit
my spaniel dragged in from the back
yard, white of horse-breath in the barn,
white of birds so desperate
for seed they pretend colorlessness—

except the cardinal, drop of heat,
too neat to be blood, too brave
to be symbol. I woke in winter

and almost-knew what I had always
almost-known, back in those dark
five o’clock walks home for dinner:

something about loneliness living
in the well of the throat, something
about fur and burrowing
and black eyes
waiting for the thaw.

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