Frost

I saw something on Saturday morning that has crystallized bright and clear in my memory forever.  It is neither cold or warm but simply bright.  A very heavy frost grew everywhere that night.  It looked like snow at first at first light - at first glance.  But the approaching morning proved it was everywhere – not just on top of things – but all around them.


All the leaves are off the weeping birches and the Japanese maples in the front garden, now.  Their branches were all white and thickened with the frost.  Everything was frozen breathless and everything was still until the sun found the garden.  Then steam poured up from the roof like smoke as the garden played host to a nature symphony.  Frost disappeared in ruler straight lines from the roof and from the lawn leaving water behind in haste depending on the sun and its shadows.  The sun breathed heat on the fuzzy white covered roof revealing black shingles and where the rough white was softened off the lawn green moss was uncovered.  In this way, color quickly found itself in the morning world.


Frost, water vapor and glistening water droplets ran along the belly of wires, roofs, lawns, clotheslines and eve troughs.  Everything was busy.  Water droplets with the brightest colors locked into so many of them – twinkled with brightness.  The weeping Birch held thousands of brilliant tiny sparksthat vibrated within its branches.  There were hundreds of little glistening packages - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet.  Mostly indigo and violet - I have never seen anything like it before and I will never wait to see it again.  I called Benjamin outside from his studying - we watched the sun and the steam and the light - distilled into each dewdrop - for nearly an hour before we went back to our chores.  Water lives so far outside the rules of all other compounds.  I have never seen water as alive, as precious, as excited, or as full of nature's music as it was at Pender Harbor in the garden last weekend.