Snow again! Shoveling driveways, digging out cars, power outages, the misery of winter. But then there’s the other side: the magic of nature.

Small flakes at first, then big ones floating in air, blown here and there like cotton in a breeze, fluffy as freshly washed hair of a young woman; beautiful. And quiet, like magical silence in the cacophony of life. What peace. No cars in the street, no people to entertain, no need for small talk. I put obligations on hold. Today is for me. I’ll do the chores tomorrow, or the next day. How lucky to be able to say, “The next day, next week, next month.” How presumptuous to think I’ll have a “next time.” But that’s how I live, as the snow falls now, and also when the sun shines, the next day. Every minute of life is an eternity for me.

The snow makes my universe the only existence at the moment, sequestered, a time apart from time. The hard ground becomes a soft carpet that grows thicker as the snow descends. I step outside midday as the snow keeps drifting down from the sky, released from its prison in the clouds. I measure its depth with a yardstick; over 24 inches at my front door, and rising. The snow climbs to my knees when I walk on it. I’m trapped in my house; a white screen encloses my world. But I’m not caged; I’m pampered by circumstance, and nature, and good fortune.

What to do? First, I put seed in the bird feeder in front of the windowsill in the breakfast room. The birds have it harder than me and need food. Then, I burn wood logs in the fireplace for the first time this year and drink hot chocolate as I warm myself by the fire. My wife Lona sits beside me, which makes everything worthwhile, natural, as it should be. I sink deeply into Black Wings Has My Angel by Elliott Chaze, a short, dark novel. I’ve never heard of Chaze, or of the novel. What a gem! I believe few people today have read or even heard of this book, which has remained buried in the literature for more than sixty years. How ironic to discover it when I’m buried in snow. Black Wings reads like a poem in prose: simple, thoughtful, a treasure. Chaze reminds me to not let life become a waiting game. He writes: “…there aren’t too many really delicious moments along the way, since most of life is spent eating and sleeping and waiting for something to happen that never does. You can figure it up for yourself, using your own life as the scoreboard. Most of living is waiting to live.”

Today’s snow is one of those “delicious moments” that I don’t need to wait for. I’ll remember to make the next day another delicious moment, and then the next after that, and so on.

Enough said. See for yourself the pictures I took of the wonders of snow during and the day after the storm.