It is the first snow since we moved here nearly two years ago, and I am enjoying the crackle of the hardened crust beneath the boots I bought last year in hopes that snow would come. It is a damper, stickier, and more fragile variety than the snow I grew accustomed to in my years in Minnesota, but all the more precious for its fragility and short life. It may well be gone tomorrow.
I follow across our yard the deer, fox and rabbit tracks - signs that my closest neighbors explore the winter landscape, too, albeit in the hours before I have left my bed. I wonder if, from the underbrush, they now watch me cross the lane to check the rhododendrons whose optimistic buds have grown ever larger since the fall. The wet ice weighs the bushes down and coats the leaves. But the buds still stand impervious, strong and green, and ready to outlast the snow and lead us into spring.