tufts of grass on a cliff collecting snow
It does not happen all at once. It is often slow, subtle, easy and soft. Layer upon layer it builds, piling deeper and deeper, smoothing out the landscape to a gentle even white. With time, with layers, rocks, roads, brush, even fence lines will become absorbed. Our world will be buffered by snow.
Yesterday we watched the ermine, pure white but for his shiny black eyes and the dark tip of his tail, darting about in the yard along the coyote fence, nearly invisible in the fresh layer of camouflage white. I remember several years ago, during the drought, observing the snowshoe hare already in their winter coats, but the ground was still open, exposed and brown. We did not see many of their tracks in the snow that year when the white cover finally came.
Inside, unrelated to the world around us, there is a turning to white as well, as another baby dove grows his feathers, transforming from a prickly, naked pink to the soft, smooth white of his parents. Unnatural, I believe at times, to be born at such odd times of the year, to be living out the cycle of life from the aviary we built in the corner of our kitchen. For these doves, this is all they know. They have room to fly, to breed, to raise their young. They are wanting for nothing more. Unnatural, I still may say, as I open their cage and fill their food and water each morning. This is my judgment, and yet who am I to judge? The same hands that helped to build the cage in the first place. The need to judge is outweighed by the need for life and beauty and song in our lives. We all play the creator in our own lives, our own world, in one way or another.
And so as the snow falls down outside the window in heavy loads, painting the landscape an even pallid shade of white, inside we rejoice in the chirp of the young one, feeding from his father’s beak, spreading his brand new wings, and learning to fly.