Snow came yesterday, a cleansing blanket, smoothing the ragged lines of the bared ground. The boughs of the conifers hang heavy, and I wonder if the trees hold awareness of this strange new weight, and how it must feel to be so laden, with no means for shaking off the load. How strange to foist my human narrative on the spruce and fir. Perhaps to them, the burden of snow is merely something to be borne. It time it will pass, as most things do.
This morning I walked for a while with my younger son through the snow-hushed trees; when we returned home, I pulled our skis from their summer resting spot under the tin of the cow’s run-in shed. It’s time.
Ben Hewitt 
There’s nothing like the hush that a full blanketing of snow makes. Where there was once the rustling of the wind through the dried grass skeletons there is now nothing. A softness like the blanket pulled up around the chin of a sleeping child.
I have to believe the conifers ARE aware of new weight on their boughs, and quietly hope they manage to celebrate nature’s “magic” as you do!
This is beautiful!
It may be time to be surprised at what dreams of speed on skis may be resting dormant within Rye. Speed offers a magnification of being alive, in addition to a sense of security, as potential for control is increased. Rye might even be immune to the admiration heaped on those who are as fast as you were, Ben, on your fat tires, when closer to his age. Should I feel it, I will aim to hide most of it.
Wax ’em up and hit it, brother!
Foist. That’s a good word.