It's Snowing Again

We've had a good bit of snow here in Boulder, Colorado, U.S.A. over the last few weeks.  I love the snow.  I love the way it looks and lays, I love the snow flakes and the ways in which they seem to creep and float down through the sky, and I love the way that the snow forces many people to realize that they are still living with nature, even in the city.  In honor of the snow, here's a beautiful poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson entitled "The Snow-Storm":

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, 

Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields, 

Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air 

Hides hill and woods, the river, and the heaven, 

And veils the farmhouse at the garden's end. 

The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet 

Delated, all friends shut out, the housemates sit 

Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed 

In a tumultuous privacy of storm. 

Come see the north wind's masonry. 

Out of an unseen quarry evermore 

Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer 

Curves his white bastions with projected roof 

Round every windward stake, or tree, or door. 

Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work 

So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he 

For number or proportion. Mockingly, 

On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths; 

A swan-like form invests the hiddden thorn; 

Fills up the famer's lane from wall to wall, 

Maugre the farmer's sighs; and at the gate 

A tapering turret overtops the work. 

And when his hours are numbered, and the world 

Is all his own, retiring, as he were not, 

Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art 

To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone, 

Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work, 

The frolic architecture of the snow.

Darwin Patterson, our beloved husky pup, enjoying a hike with us in the snow on 1 January 2015.  He gets to carry some of his own gear with his little red pack!