Gifts Of Lights

I have to own up to not enjoying this winter as much as I'd have swore I would if I'd been given the forecast up front.  I'm not sure if it was the extreme cold early on or the wind that accompanied it, but other than a morning here, afternoon there lately, I've been nearly miserable.  If I'm thinking about heading to Alabama for a vacation?  Send.  Help.

I've really been bothered by this.  I've had so much beautiful snow and very few beautiful snow pictures.  I haven't even really made much of an effort to take pictures.  I did take a short walk back to the ponds the other day, but it was more of an exercise than a treat.  Tonight, as I was feeding and my fingers were so cold they hurt, all I could think about was getting finished and going to the house.

As I made one last trip out to the bird feeder, crunching through the icy snow, I noticed that my sweet little all time favorite solar light in the entire world was flickering brightly buried deep in the snow.  This little lantern has to be almost ten years old and lately sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.  Any time it's shining is a gift, at least to me. 

I grabbed the camera, sat down on the cold snow and took some pictures.  And a deep breath.

Earlier, Auntie Reg had reminded me that the ISS was making a good pass over us tonight.   If you haven't watched for that, you should.  What an amazing thing to think about, those astronauts up there circling around and around the earth at almost 18,000 mph.  It was pretty cloudy and I doubted I'd be able to see it, but I hadn't gotten the mail yet, so timed it just in case.  I opened the front door and was startled to see the Christmas lights were on. 

These lights haven't been on since early-ish in January.  In fact, I'd made a half-hearted attempt to actually turn them back on after this latest snow, but wasn't successful.  I have no idea what made them come on tonight.

And I've never noticed these shadows around the mailbox before.  They weren't really quite this obvious, but I set my shutter speed a hair slower to pick up some extra light.  The glittering snowflakes were an extra reward :-).  I played around with my camera for another minute or so, looked up and, zoom, there went the space station.

The night was still.  Cold, but still.  I didn't even notice.  I stood leaning up against the mailbox looking at the sparkling sky, sparkling snow, sparkling lights.  I could smell the snow.  Could smell that it was icy, no longer fluffy.  Hank barked off in the distance, but there was no other noise.  The quiet of snow.  The beauty of winter.  A gift.