The air is filled with tiny particles of snow softly descending, diverging in ambivalent commotion. The wind is a faint aimless gesture. Narrowing my eyes to the misty grey horizon all is muted between the snow covered scars of the harvested cornfields, a blanket of white along the icing winding river. The shoreline trees are a blur. The arms and  channeled seats of the frozen patio chairs on the balcony are covered in a blister of white. December has levelled its implacability,

The strength of the snow increased. For a moment a stream of sunlight penetrated the gloss and illuminated the vista. My erstwhile physician, lately returned from the pyramids, poetically wrote to me of the sound of the sea from the Gulf of Mexico, apostophizing the lack of snow. His journey will circle the globe, again and again…

I am poised in solitude at my desk – overlooking the fields and upriver, nothing before me but a snowy December day in the country. My thinking is reflected in the misty clarity of the snowbound landscape, its uniform grey highlighting only the most rigid ardour, the remnants of Nature’s undoing, the sediment of the past, the hope for the future and the inexpressible beauty of the present. While reflection has bred inertia and uncertainty, like the frozen landscape I am not about to retreat from what feels natural. I have yet to grasp the complications of the withdrawal.

Tomorrow we may lapse into devotion to the past, recalling the days when a 21-mile cycle along the beach was de rigueur, when everything was fresh and new, when friends visited for lunch along the pier, when images of the sea were endless, when towering pines blotted the sun, when things were yet unchanged. But things do change. And with them thinking changes. New imperatives arise while old customs dissolve. The new ambitions pierce the sky with unique brilliance. We yet await the full picture.