By dawn, the valley has turned white without snow.
Night has left crystal—a fine skin of frost over every surface. Fences, stones, and reeds glisten in the half-light, transformed. The air is sharp but hushed, the kind of stillness that hums beneath sound.
Each blade of grass wears white. The thicket’s dry stems are coated in frost so delicate it seems woven by air itself. Even the old walnut’s rough bark sparkles with tiny spines—frozen threads of moisture drawn from breath and cloud. Along the streambank, hoarfrost has furred bare cypress trunks, whitening them.
When I breathe, vapor rises and joins the thin mist hanging over the stream. My exhale becomes part of the scene. Nothing here is permanent. Nothing here asks to be.
By mid-morning, it fades.
The sun edges above the ridge. Frost loses its hold, turns to droplets sliding from grass blades. A cardinal flies from the juniper, shaking loose a small shower of melt. Some sinks into the ground. Some returns to vapor, waiting for another humid, still, cold night. The meadow darkens back to its winter brown and green.
From the kitchen window, I watch deer emerge to graze where white covered everything an hour ago. The stream flows as it always has. By afternoon, only dampness on the patio stones and some faint white in the deep shadow remain.
For a few hours, the world was white.
Now it isn’t.