Beauty is Where You Find It

Those weathermen. Ummm, I should include "weatherwomen". Or is there such a word for the female persuasion? Perhaps I should begin again...

Those meterologists! Perhaps there are some folk who look forward to their winter forecasts. People like Bill up in Wasilla. Bill seems to glory in living barely surviving in the midst of severe cold and winter gloom. He enjoys cold winter days and subzero temps and winter snowstorms.

But me? Those forecasts tend to cause me to hunker down into endurance mode and to pull some stew meet out of the freezer. Today I went to the winter extreme of buying a crockpot cookbook from the local consignment store. I figure spring is not yet here (Ha! That's an understatement!) and crockpot stew or soup sounds mighty good. And tomorrow it will taste mighty good.

But you know what! Even though I dislike winter and prefer the snow to fall elsewhere I find myself endlessly fascinated with the beauty that winter creates.

Tuesday we drove from Minnesota to our home in western Iowa. Hubby was driving and I was watching the sculpted snowbanks alongside the highway.

They reminded me of my childhood when we rode the schoolbus an hour every day to school and later, home again. The distance was barely 10 miles but we had to stop and pick up so many families. Some of the kids were dawdlers which meant the bus driver would wait impatiently at the end of the driveway. Once he saw the kids headed for the bus he waited a bit longer for them to actually step aboard. Sometimes, if they did not appear, after honking the horn and waiting a bit longer, we simply left without them. Our bus route was the farthest out and we were consistently the last bus to school.

On that ten-mile trip I loved watching the winter scenery as we rolled down the road. And I still remember the lovely curve of the drifted snow, mile after mile, field after field.

Winter has much beauty. As does spring, summer and fall.

.