Merry! Happy!

When I arrived (after a ten hour drive) on Sunday, the temperature was -2 and the windchill was Godawful below zero. It has since warmed up to 22 this morning. But Christmas is better with snow, and there certainly is lots of it up here.

I hope all of you are warm and surrounded by folks you love and who love you. Here's my present to you all -- a view from the Lake Erie Metropark and an appropriate poem from Wallace Stevens.



The Snow Man.

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Next year at the beach, I swear.

I'm off to Michigan tomorrow. Michigan, where a winter storm yesterday looked like this:



They're expecting more snow tomorrow. The temperature right now is 18 degrees, with a windchill of 8.

I wish I could find my boots.

That's some moon.

There's a full moon tonight, which may explain why my day went as it did. I vaguely remembered reading something about this full moon being especially spectacular, so I looked for it as I drove home. I turned the corner to the east, and there it was:



Okay, that's not exactly the moon I saw when I turned the corner. It's the moon I saw once I got home, got my camera and tripod and headed out looking for a spot that was relatively dark. Unfortunately, my attempt at "arty shot" of moon through trees caused the focus to center on the trees, rather than the moon. Ah well. It's still a pretty moon.

Go take a look