“How many lessons of faith and beauty we should lose, if there were no winter in our year!”–Thomas Wentworth Higginson

While winter can be a cold and dreary time, it can also be a time of great clarity.  Take the trees for example.  Tall pines, oaks, and maples stand with their bare branches raised to heaven leaving them exposed for all to see.  If you look closely you will see the nests that have been abandoned but were once alive with birds or squirrels.  You can see what was hidden beneath the beauty of the leaves.

Although some people may think that a tree’s beauty is gone when the leaves are gone, I think they are just as beautiful, only in a different way.  What you see in winter are the branches – some still strong, some a little brittle – the simplicity of such a complex entity.  Yet each one has been instrumental in fostering the life of that tree and the leaves that spring from it.