Armchair Zen

Nature’s Ornaments

A winter storm dressed our world with glitter and glass, diamonds on the ground, fragile frozen ornaments that trimmed the wild Christmas trees.

Crystal Path

Each step sounds like walking on peanut brittle. Everywhere, there is a glaze of ice.

From the sky slowly drifts a never-ending sprinkling of down. Cotton-marshmallow bits so large I can hear them alight on the hood of my slicker. Spft, spft, plat, the sounds they make as they hitch a ride.

Tanned and barren heads of Queen Anne’s lace and wild fennel are now crystal flowers, so finely crafted they would draw envious compliments from the best glass makers in France.

Up the Avenue of the Pines, Chuy and I marvel at the world transformed, as it is so often out here in the Magic.

Yesterday we walked frozen ground without snow cover. Grasses, still green and arching, seemed to shatter underfoot like dry reeds.

Today, wherever we look our world is shining with newly-minted diamonds. Bare trees that seemed asleep for their winter’s hibernation are now coated in glass. Giant, 30-foot decorations worthy of Macy’s window.

Swarovski Lichens

Over the crest of Nishan Hill, we ply the trail to the edge of the hardwood forest.

All about lie the downed and decaying remnants of the ghosts of growing-seasons past.

Painted with milk and frosted with sugar, retired trees don their holiday attire.

Frosted trees

In the morning sun, the woods are splintered with shadow and light.

The air smells like snow and New Year’s Eve and ice fishing.

Downy flecks speckle my face, tickle my nose.

Methuselah and ice

There is an immediacy, an almost-urgency to be out here, out in the great wild of it all, for it will not last.

The sun will warm our earth, or the skies will bury these wonders with more wonders, more snow and ice.

But this now and this next belong only to me and Chuy and the cosmos and The Magic.

Chuy in the hardwoods

Crystal floor

Pine gems

Join us, won’t you?

Be at peace,

Paz