Winter Appreciation Month

I am trying really hard not feel oppressed by Winter, because it is far from being over. I'm trying really hard not to mind feeling a little cooped up indoors, huddling in blankets and sweaters--and shivering as I am shivering at this moment. I'm trying to learn to NOT transfer my physical state of coldness to my mental and emotional states. For example, if I let myself succumb to the gray, vitamin-D deficient, philosophical fatalism of February, I am only shooting myself in the foot. So, I have been looking for the beauty of the natural world, and I figured something out today that I should have figured out long ago (especially living in Utah) and that is that the world does not have to be green to be beautiful. Green is nice; green is comforting, and life-giving. But green is not the end-all of beauty; green does not have a corner on the loveliness market. There is something about the way the bare branches of trees arch upward like the arms of candelabra. It's something you can only see when the leaves are gone. Or the way the sun when it's setting turns the white mountains to amber. Or the way the snow dripping off trees sounds like a light rain... Yesterday, Utah Lake looked like a stripe of white gold. (Christina can tell you.) Yes, Winter is beautiful. I will always prefer Summer. But Summer's foil--Winter--is taking on its own unique brilliance for me.