Fairyland Of Frost

Waking to an incredibly dense fog, I found once it lifted, a landscape transformed into pure crystaline beauty, with the simplest of forms glimmering in a coating of icy diamond crusting.

The common was uncommon, the trees hung heavily with lacy trim, the air shimmered in the intense Winter sun. The corners, fencerows and roads I am familiar with were from another landscape.........

I stood, breathing in the searing cold, no longer middle aged and aching and chilled to the bone but a child again in Italy, in the mountains, where everything had the whisper of fairies and sprites and an older world beyond this one.

In Germany, when St. Nicholas walked the gas-lit darkened streets in the quiet of snow......the same feel. In the hush, I listened for footsteps.

The trees, like great mounds of heaven cloud descended and glowing ethereally, what one would find in the Alps.

Was this my Indiana? Was this the muddied, Winter-ravaged vista I had seen the day before?

Too beautiful for words, I shook off the biting cold and hurried back inside.

With warmed bones and wrapped in proper clothing, I watched as the hoar-frost fell delicately and burst in the air; a million bits of glitter to briefly shine and disappear.

And then, the momentary vision,  gone..........

I blink.

A deep sigh.

On with the day.

Pax.