Home Z Home in Winter White

by Zinta Aistars

My beloved Z Acres

Who can concentrate on writing when the world all around is wrapped in white? The woods are dripping with white lace, the hillside slopes are covered with white blankets, the pond is frozen solid sheets of white, and I am in up to my knees, and in places, mid-thigh.

I love snow. I was born in December, and I have never been able to get enough of winter since. For me, it is the most beautiful of seasons. Spring is lush with green and blossom, the  autumn blazes with color, but summer, my least favorite, can be blistering and humid and hot. Only the winter is like waking into a fantasy, the earth pristine and crystallized, a living storybook with clean and open pages.

I have never appreciated winter more. This winter took longer to get to us in Michigan than any in my memory. The holidays were brown with mud. In early January, I was outside in my flannel shirt, sleeves rolled up, working in the garden and warily watching spring flowers coming up from the mushy ground ... far too early. Climate change is feeling painfully real and near.

At last, winter has come. And it comes with insistence, making up for lost time. Day after day, a soft and powdery snow has been falling. Some days, the skies open up with blue, a sun with teeth, shining over the fields in blinding white. Most days, the skies have been heavy and dense with snow clouds ... but the beauty is infinite. Guinnez and I eagerly go out to play each and every snow day. We can't get enough, kid and pup again, all play and wonder.