Gray clouds gather above the valley. The temperature drops to that edge where rain might become something else. The light shifts. It’s heavier than yesterday, expectant.
Then, the first flakes.
Not quite snow. These early arrivals drift past my window like ash from a distant fire. They appear against dark trees, vanish against pale sky, disappear the moment they touch earth.
Three deer emerge from the woods. They lift their heads from fading clover, ears turning. One stamps a hoof—not alarmed, just noting. Her yearling stands close, learning winter through her mother’s stillness.
The flakes thicken.
No longer countable, they swirl on invisible currents. Some rise before falling. Others spiral down. Each crystal formed miles above. Water vapor froze around dust, growing elaborate arms as it tumbled through the sky. A brief mandala of ice. Then gone.
The snow eases. Flakes grow sparse until only stragglers drift past. The sky lightens. This isn’t yet the storm that will bury the valley, not the ice that will coat every branch. Just this: winter’s fingertips brushing across autumn’s face.
Strange how the first snowflakes of the year surprise, even when expected. We watched leaves fall, felt soil harden. The catbirds vanished weeks ago, replaced by juncos arriving from the north. Yet when these first flakes arrive, something lifts—as if we were seeing snow for the first time.
Perhaps we are. This snow has never fallen. These crystals formed in this moment’s clouds, carrying today’s moisture on this afternoon’s wind. They fall into a world aged another year, onto ground that has never known these exact snowflakes.
I, too, meet this moment anew. The person who watched earlier snows has gone. Cells died and were replaced. Thoughts shifted and shifted again. My heart has learned new rhythms. Even grief has changed its shape—softened at the edges like stone in a stream.
We meet, the snow and I, as strangers who have known each other forever.
I watch the snow and deer from my kitchen table window. We are all brief forms; crystallized for a moment before returning to the whole. The snowflake melts to water, flows to the sea, rises as mist. The deer walk their few winters before becoming soil, root, leaf. This body, too, is letting go—muscle by muscle, breath by weakening breath.
Soon, I will return to wholeness.
Soon, the winter snows will come.
The valley will gracefully accept its erasure, simplified to smooth curves until its green rebirth: hill, tree, a dark thread of water through white. But this first snow flurry is an invitation, not a command—a reminder that seasons turn,
that nothing stays,
that everything flows,
that life depends on this,
that beauty is held in this:
soil to snow,
snow to mud,
mud to sprout,
sprout to flower,
flower to fruit,
fruit to soil,
soil to snow.
One Response
Brother as someone on a process to determine and discover I consider it no coincidence that I stumble upon you and your work. Your work is beautiful and you inspire me to work harder in my meditations. Thank you.