最喜欢冬天的部分，就是它的雪景。轻盈、洁白的雪花纷纷扬扬，这场初雪似乎在抚慰大地。在这样的时节里我们也许应该驻足，审视内心，重新感受亲人团聚的温馨。我们观察着事物的结构、树枝与雪花的形状，还有家庭、事业…… 冬日带来的是宁静的漫漫长夜，正好入梦。

 

What I love most about winter is its snow.

 

The early snows fall soft and white and seem to heal the landscape. There are as yet no tracks through the drifts, no muddied slush in the roads. The wind sweeps snow into the scars of our harvest-time haste, smoothing the brow of hill, hiding furrow and cog and trash in the yard. Snow muffles the shriek of metal and the rasp of motion. It covers our flintier purposes and brings a redeeming silence, as if a curtain has fallen on the strivings of a year.

 

And now we may stop, look inward, and rediscover the amber warmth of family and conversation. At such times, locked away inside wall and woolen, lulled by the sedatives of wood-smoke and candlelight, we recall the competing claims of nature. We see the branch and bark of trees, rather than the sugar-scented green of their leaves. We look out the window and admire the elegance of ice crystal, the bravely patient tree leaning leafless into the wind, the dramatic shadows of the stooping sun. We look at the structure of things, the geometry of branch and snowflake, family and deed.

 

When snowflake drifts the road we head indoors and resign ourselves to the quiet crackle of the wood fire. The example of the woodpile and the well-stocked larder tells us that we can achieve what we dream, and winter brings us long, silent nights to dream on.