snowy evening

there's something that happens to me when it snows and it is difficult to explain just what it is. in its simplest description, it is a giddy feeling that sits somewhere between my stomach and head. one might call it the heart. I get giddy in my heart.

i could sit at a window, especially at night, and watch snow fall until the sun makes its way around the world once again. i would be completely content to watch it pile up, flake upon flake, coating the world in white and somehow making everything magically quiet. i love how it paints a certain hue outside - by just looking outside through a partially opened blind i can almost always tell when snow is falling. perhaps it is my sixth sense. maybe minnesotans are born with it. maybe it is from my years of skiing.

mostly, it is because, to me, it is the thing in life that offers the most tangible feeling of what hope really is. outcomes deemed impossible become possible once again. there is the chance of starting fresh, of being the first one to track footsteps across the smooth landscape. it conveys, in a strange way, warmth and contentedness that is searched for each day. when it is snowing, i fall asleep with a profound sense of peace. all is right with the world.

is it unrealistic of me? do i fool myself? of course i know it will just melt. but the moments, hours, sometimes days when it is falling - they are somehow worth it. that feeling there in my heart - look at the snow, and that's what my hope looks like.