Frosty Frosting

            Looking out my windows this morning, the grass is covered in a thick coating of frost. The light of the sun hasn’t reached it yet. It looks like a dull, fuzzy gray mat, dead and lifeless. Very soon, the fingers of the warming luminary will touch this thick carpet and make it blaze and glisten as though my yard has been strewn with millions of miniscule diamonds. The dull mat will suddenly explode into a breathtaking, eye catching, mind boggling display. So often we miss seeing the beauty around us. We forget to anticipate miracles that occur daily, because we don’t take the time to look or to listen.

            Yesterday, I was listening to the wind in the pines. It wasn’t a gentle breeze that is said to whisper in the pines, but it was stronger. It actually made the several evergreens around me sing. Their needled branches swayed and kept time with the music. I stopped to listen for a few minutes. Their voices rose and fell in intensity, coinciding with the strength of the wind.

            I can remember as a child at my grandmother Miner’s home, I would escape the hustle and noise of a large family get together, by going outside onto the front porch. It was sheltered by three tall pines and a hemlock tree. The wind always moved through their dark needles. It was a comforting sound.

            Grandma always kept old carpet runners on the green painted Adirondack loveseat to cover her plants in the cold weather. Most of the gatherings happened at Thanksgiving and Christmas, so the air outside was chilly. My oasis from the noise and confusion inside was to roll up in those carpets and listen to the chorus of evergreens singing a winter song. Snug and warm in the carpet cocoon, I would relax in a world of my own thoughts, enticed by the song of the wind and the pines.