The New Year is coming in, and with luck it will bring some snow along with it. I’m with family this week, writing this by the lights on the concolor fir tree while we’re baking Santa Lucia rolls for a friend’s birthday.
Right now, as the Covid numbers are going up again, I’m newly aware of these gifts — reading to my nephew, holding my niece, talking with my sister and brother in law in the kitchen … taking a walk in the woods with my parents through a pine grove I’ve somehow never seen before. Ambling along the shore with an old friend.
Wherever you are this week, I hope you are finding some quiet and warmth, however simple. Taking the time to finish a cup of tea, or waking up to falling snow. Wherever the next year is going, I wish us all a breathing space.
An American tree sparrow fluffs up in the snow. Photo by Zachary Adams, naturalist at Pleasant Valley Sanctuaries.
Notchview in Windsor grooms miles of trails for cross-country skiing and snowshoeing. Photo courtesy of the Trustees of Reservations.
A man cross-country skiing in a field at the Notchview Reservation in Windsor. Courtesy of The Trustees of Reservations.
A visitor walks up the steps of a building painted deep red in Kawase Hasui's Zozoji Temple, Shiba. Press image courtesy of the Clark Art Institute
A visitor walks up the steps of a building painted deep red in Kawase Hasui's Spring Snow at Kiyomizu Hall. Press image courtesy of the Clark Art Institute
Saplings stand dark against the snow in Shima Tamami's print 'A Stand of Trees.' Press image courtesy of the Clark Art Institute
A girl in a red coat gives a snowman with a tall peaked snow hat a round nose in acclaimed illustrator Jan Brett's Snowpeople. Press image courtesy of the Norman Rockwell Museum.
An Eastern bluebird perches on a branch. Courtesy photo by Ken Thomas.
