Winter has returned for a visit this week. Temperatures that hovered several degrees over freezing for almost a week dove into Arctic temps over night. Back out came my long heavy down-filled coat, fur-lined boots and warmers for my mittens.

When you’re a human to a dog in northern climes, weather must be weathered, regardless of how cold the winds might blow.

This morning, as I walked along the river, immersed in a world of Mother Nature’s wintry artistry on display, my thoughts drifted back to a quote I included on the vision board I crafted at last night’s ReWrite Journey workshop. “I am going to make everything around me beautiful– and that shall be my life.”

The universe, it seems, is my silent accomplice, generously dusting the landscape with splendour and awe.

This morning, as Beaumont the Sheepadoodle and I meandered through the woods, I paused to marvel at the splendour of a world cloaked in winter’s magic, reminding me of another quote that appeared on my vision board last night. “Seek to see the magic in the moment.”  

Even with the mercury clinging with chilly determination to -18°C, with windchill, – 26C, magic shimmered all around me. Each breath I exhaled danced like white mist before me. And, even though the mistiness of my breath forced me to shed my sunglasses, which had steamed up above the scarf safeguarding my face against the biting cold, I couldn’t deny, the world looked even more beautiful when I saw it through clear-eyed wonder.

Beaumont bounded through the snow, sniffing and snuffling at the base of trees and fallen logs and with every step I took, my thoughts cascaded back to this morning’s meditation and its gentle reminder: “Acknowledge the beauty present in every moment.”

It was all there before me.

A symphony of light playing upon snow-draped branches, two Canada geese skimming the surface of the ice-covered river their wings swooshing in harmonious flight, a squirrel, embodying the spirit of the woods, bounding energetically across the earth before leaping up into a tree with one enthusiastic stretch of his body. And on the strip of river still joyfully flowing free of winter’s icy embrace, sunlight sparkling like the dancing fairies I used to spin stories about when my daughter’s were younger.

Enchanted magic, all of it

Eleanor Roosevelt once remarked, “Beautiful young people are merely accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art.”

In the exquisite and enduring splendour of nature, which has witnessed aeons more than any of us, I breathe deeply into the truth of her words.

Our human nature is to grow older. Mother Nature, in her perpetual cycle, is a masterpiece of time. As am I. As are you.