What a day. It started snowing mid-morning and continued snowing through early evening. When it was all said and done the ground was covered in a blanket of snow and all its imperfections were erased. Then when the snow stopped falling the earth reclaimed its ground. The residual heat from the days and weeks preceding the storm asserted itself. The Mountain Laurels turned green again as did the oaks. The driveway cleared as if by magic. The cleansing continued through the night. As I look out at the pasture in the morning light, it is mostly brown and bare of snow.

We’ll be able to go on about our business today, with only hints of what transpired the day before. But what if this was the first day of something bigger? It must have been like this at the dawn of the last ice age, or any ice age for that matter. At some point there was a nice day, then there was a snow day, and then another, and then another until it created an ice sheet several thousand years later. Whatever was alive in the beginning, however, was certainly not there for the end. Even the ground, trapped beneath the ice, changed, compressed, destroying most of the evidence of what had gone before.

It gives me pause to think about those events, the ones that last millions of years when I’m hoping to live for maybe 90. It makes me laugh, actually. I have oak trees that live longer than I will. But no sense getting in a tizzy, I suppose. It’s just fun thinking about it. Meanwhile, I’ll enjoy this one day and look out at the hills beyond and see them still blanketed in snow and lit by the morning sun. I’ll remember the peace of the day before when that snow fell. I’ll also think about the same date 48 years early when my oldest son was born in Pasadena, Texas. it snowed that day as well. As coincidences go, that’s a nice one, and make yesterday’s snowfall even more memorable.