By the calender year we've yet close to a month to go before official winter arrives.  Unofficially, although we are yet in fall, winter has arrived here.  We will not see one daytime high above the freezing mark for quite some time to come.  The wind that blows now is a wickedly icy one.  The landscape is bare of green life.

And although we've been treated to the occasional spectacle of powdery snow sifting through the air, that was just a preliminary, a dress rehearsal so to speak, for the real event.  The 'real event', as in a monstrous snowstorm of enduring quality and survival-challenge is yet on the horizon - the far one, we can hope.  But last night, when I awoke and my eyes travelled in the dark toward the window I saw that telltale symptom of snow in the pink glow that seeped into the darkness of our bedroom.

And this morning, there it was.  Roofs, gardens, the entire streetscape and everything beyond it suffused with that white blanket heralding the arrival of  nature's seasonal exterior design.  Not an absolute abundance by any means, just enough to give that general impression of what is yet to come.  A mere inch or so of snow, but it will remain in place, and it will soon enough be covered by heaps of snow advancing on the landscape in a steady progression of snow events.

It is beautiful, yes it most certainly is that.  But also it can be hazardous, even while enticing us to make of it what we will, tramping through the woods shod in cold-resistant boots, admiring the frosted overlay on coniferous trees, and driving over highways where the winter wind picks up the ambient snow and tosses it over sheer ice covering the paving creating a challenge to our memories of winter survival.