Postcard from the Land of Enchantment

"The first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of a world and wake up in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment then where is it to be found?" - J. B. Priestley.

I love snow! Snow brings its own special kind of magic. It transforms things, covers things, softens things. The first few snows bring out the child in me: I giggle; I make tracks; I sing.

We had a few flurries over the weekend but they didn't really cover the ground. But when I got up Tuesday morning, I awoke to a land of enchantment! The ground was covered with an inch or two of the white stuff, and it was still snowing.

I stopped by one of my favorite ponds just to see what it looked like in the snow. You may remember this scene. I posted a similar photo before: October 17's "View from the Dock." But it looks quite different now!

I could almost sense it at the edges when I visited the little pond last week: the quiet hush of impending snow; a waiting world.

The trees are bare now, and the pond water grows closer to freezing. The little rowboat that first appeared in my October 22 "Not an Ending" photo is adrift mid-pond (you can see it just above the fire pit), and once again there are those round patterns on the water, like the snow circles in Sunday's photo.

It was still putting it down pretty good when I got there. I tucked my camera under my coat until the last minute, then pulled it out and snapped a few shots, shielded the lens with my hand, snapped a few more. If you look to the far left and right lower corners of this photo, you can see the snow falling.

Even in just the few minutes I was there, I managed to get pretty well covered in snow. My coat was covered in white, my hair was soaked, my camera had snowflakes on it. I took my coat off, shook it out, got back in the car and turned the heater on high, carefully wiped off my camera.

You might think this would be the start of winter, with the snow staying around a while; but the first few snows are like will-o'-the-wisp. By late afternoon, all the snow was gone!