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| Photo Credit - Natalie Duncan Riddell |
An old friend of mine took this photo. That picture is what actually inspired me to write this, even though in the moment that I first saw it, I had no idea what I would be writing about. I just knew that I had to write… something.
Now, if you’re from the south, like both of us (although she long ago went objectively insane and decided to move to the frozen wastes of Montana, where she just recently snapped this shot), this photo might look like harvest-time cotton, at least at first glance. But if you look at it a moment longer, you will notice that it’s not cotton at all, but rather snow collecting on the bare, spindly little branches of some type of tree or bush that I couldn’t identify if my life depended on it.
It’s a lovely shot, really; yet there’s something about it that makes me feel sad.
This being other than the fact that my friend now lives so far away in terrible, yucky, cold Montana. Oh, I tease. Montana, I’m sure, is a wonderful place (it’s certainly filled with beautiful countryside), but I cannot resist teasing my friend about the weather there. I can’t stand the cold. Not even a little bit. Give me the brutal summer of Arkansas in August anytime over that double-digits-below-zero nonsense.
I will admit that I do love a good snowfall in the winter. They are so rare here in the south. Snow blanketing the ground, the trees, the streets… icicles growing from the eaves of houses, snowmen, snow cream (yes the kind that uses raw eggs, USDA and USFDA regulations can take a long walk off a short pier)… these are the joys of winter that I absolutely love.
