Where Winter Lives

There is a place where the pines are crusted with snow and the spruce are coated with the dusty glitter of frost.

A place where the wind howls in misery as the winter passes,

and Spring shivers meekly in the unwelcoming cold, hesitant to come.

But every once and again, the fortunate soul catches a glimpse of the place transformed.

The gateway to a crystal forest opens and a tantalizing fairyland unfolds.

Dressings of ice sparkle like shards of glass, iridescent in the lucent sun,

and one is surrounded by heaven's great tears of icy glass, richly furring branches that once were bare.

While the maples groan and the pin oaks splinter, the tinkling branches laugh in the wind.

For a few short days, the world is terrible and beautiful at once and there is a nothingness in between.

This is where winter lives.