Good Morning

For the most part, winter is a gentle creature in my part of the world.  She will have tantrums in February and March, shrieking like a banshee and battering our more northern and western shores with huge waves, but here in the sheltered inland valleys of southern Vancouver island, even those angry days are heard at a distance.  Our valley gathers her mountains around her like a shawl and stays relatively warm and still even on the worst of winter days.

Today winter has donned white lace; wearing frost like a mantle, turning every roadside bush and leaf to frosted filligree, edging the bright red branches of marsh dogwood and wild rose in silver, turning the bright yellow ochre of the willow branches into gold inlay set in a silver and pewter ground.  

Even the sky is metallic this morning:  layers of pewter, silver, and platinum with a single strip of pale yellow to show us where the sun sits behind the clouds.

The brackish waters of the estuary carry a thin skim of ice this morning and blue-grey herons, still and silent as ghosts, fish along its brittle edges.  Further out in the bay, where the water is more salty, the ice has not yet taken hold but the rippled surface of the water looks as cold and hard as steel.  

Where the swift currents smooth the ripples from the strait between our island and the mainland, a patch of bright blue has broken through the clouds and is reflected in the water below; a single broad brushstroke of colour against a monochrome wash.

All this still, quiet beauty speaks to me of peace, of calm, of rest; as if nature is telling us that now it is time to draw a breath, slow down, and allow ourselves time to regather the energy with we spent with such abandon in December.  I am more than ready to do so. 

So, this morning you will find me doing my chores but taking time to pause, to window gaze, to rest, to savour the special beauty of this silver-frost day, and to dream.  

Everything has its season.  This is the season for rest.