Snowfall

Today we had the first real snowfall of the season, and now at three o'clock in the morning, the world outside is muffled and cold, with the drifted sheets of snow seeming to glow in the dark, and the sky colored the pale pink of ice. The lights from my house play over the covered ground, heavy boughs, stumps, and myriad mounds, the sources of which made unknown by their cold wrapping; it feels almost supernatural. I sat for a while in a room with the lights turned off, looking out the window and sipping Japanese whiskey, so that what I saw was crisp and cold and beautiful, but what I felt was warm and comforting.