Daily Beauty, Day #1: Cold

Today is a very cold day.

From my window, I can see the wind sweep across the road, blurring the air in great white gusts of winter flurries. I wake up early for my class, don all my warm apparel and then venture out into the open. At first I walk only with destination in mind. I am walking from one point to another. I am walking because I need to get somewhere else. But it is bright outside and I blink several times. It occurs to me that this morning walk can be more than a means to an end if I refocus my vision. Perhaps it can be an end in itself.

The sky is blue, the air is crisp and sunlight sparkles on the new mounds of snow. Last night left large piles of fluffy snow, fresh and as of yet untouched, waiting on my doorstep. I wade through them. It is hard work, but there is something thrilling, somehow, about being the first one to sink down into the soft, glistening white.

As I make my way across the field, I see the wind spiralling across the surface, as though it danced across ocean waters. I have to pause in the midst of its power, but it strikes me that this is some sort of adventure, on some sort of small scale. The beauty of nature is paired with its might, and I am some part of its majesty. I am not looking out from within, merely observing what it seems to be like. I am here. I am in this moment; I belong to the beauty I witness, and although I am smaller than what is around me, I may carry a piece of it with me.

It is cold today. Sometimes I complain about the cold. But perhaps I won’t today.