In the light of the afternoon sun you can see that deer have passed by, that the little juncos were out pecking through the snow for seeds. The long shadows of the trees follow the curves of the hill down its slopes. And the snow itself glitters as if a choir of angels had spent the night sprinkling diamond dust from the heavens.
“This is your reward,” I think to myself as I climb the hill. The snow rises in glistening little clouds around my boots. I stop for a moment and listen to the silence of the woods. The birds have had their breakfasts and are resting now, conserving their energy. I’m as grateful on their behalf as I am for my own sake that the sun has reappeared with its gentle winter warmth. We needed this.
I notice that my face is wearing a smile as I continue my climb, adding my tracks to those the animals made. They seem to link us together somehow, these signs that we were here, on this hill, in the shimmering snow at this moment in time. “Every now and then,” I sometimes say, “a moment comes along that makes all the rest of them worth it.” This, surely, is one of those.