Winter Patterns

Much like the patterns created by the frost and snow, our winter days develop patterns of their own.  Chores take longer and although lengthening, daylight hours are still very short.  Even so, we find it important to pause... to enjoy...

'the frolic architecture of the snow'.

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 windware 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 hidden thorn;
Fills up the farmer'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.

excerpted from The Snow Storm by Ralph Waldo Emerson