Last Saturday I completed my 59^th year on this planet. Now, about a week into my 60^th year, I know that I am no spring chicken. I’ve been an adult, chronologically at least, for forty or so ears now. So I really ought to know better.

I ought to know that the season’s first snowfall is nothing to get excited about. I ought to know better than to marvel at the sight of snowflakes parachuting down and invading streets and sidewalks. I ought to know that the thin white blanket that now covers the ground is just the beginning of back aching shoveling and scraping that will soon become tedious and tiring, and the white streaks on the roads will only become slippery and hazardous in the weeks and months to follow.  More than anything, the cold that I so enthusiastically bundle up for today is here to stay for what will soon feel like an eternity, and  daylight will diminish and fade as the days grow shorter and the cold bleak blackness of winter tightens its grip on the landscape. To quote William Butler Yeats and Cormac McCarthy (both out of context), winter is “No country for old men.”

Yet, here I am, in my office, looking out my window and watching the snow fall, feeling none of the cynicism that time and experience have informed my life with. Instead I watch the snow through the wide eyed lenses of my youth, and I see once again the full scope of infinite wonder that a young child views the world through. It’s hope and possibility. It all comes back to me, like warm air being pushed through furnace vents.

There will be plenty of time for the oppressive forces of winter to exert their gloom. Today I am content, for at least the eternity that exists in the time it takes for a snowflake to melt after hitting a city sidewalk, to rediscover just one of the unexplored worlds that were revealed every day when I was very young.