This morning, when I went outside to take Hazel on her morning walk, I was greeted with the beauty of snow sparkling on the ground and falling from the sky. I confess that the little boy in me still loves the first snow of the year. And ever since I read the following passage from Buechner a few years ago, it has come to mind that first time each year that I open the door to the wonder of snow:

You wake up on a winter morning and pull up the shade, and what lay there the evening before is no longer there--the sodden gray yard, the dog droppings, the tire tracks in the frozen mud, the broken lawn chair you forgot to take in last fall. All this has disappeared overnight, and what you look out on is not the snow of Narnia but the snow of home, which is no less shimmering and white as it falls. The earth is covered with it, and it is falling still in silence so deep that you can hear its silence. It is snow to be shoveled, to make driving even worse than usual, snow to be joked about and cursed at, but unless the child in you is entirely dead, it is snow, too, that can make the heart beat faster when it catches you by surprise that way, before your defenses are up. It is snow that can awaken memories of things more wonderful than anything you ever knew or dreamed.

Frederick Buechner, "The Gospel as Fairy Tale"