Snow is quiet, but not exactly silent, have you noticed? It makes almost a little whoosh sound as it falls all around you.
I look out the window and it is almost Currier & Ives perfect. I wonder if I will ever be able to adequately capture the beauty of a winter’s morning with my camera lens. Snowflakes flitter and float to the ground, and I think back to when I was a child and the man across the road from us had a collection of carriages and sleighs. His name was David Gwinn, his nickname was “The Squire.”
Now today there is not actually snow on the roads where you could take a sleigh out, but for some reason this morning as I looked out the window, a memory came floating back across the early morning. In my head I could hear the faint remembrance of sleigh bells of long ago. It was such a happy sound. Of course, things change and now in place of where Mr. Gwinn’s horses once happily munched apples, a McMansion is planted.
These horsey memories for lack of a better description were part of a magic that many kids do not have in their lives today. It’s a way of life I fear will be pushed aside, and I see this pushing aside in West Vincent with every new transgression thought up against a horse show that has been not only part of the fabric Chester County for near a decade but served the community well.
This makes me sad. These people who in my opinion, are trying to get rid of some of the very civilities that fed their pretensions to move to places like West Vincent in the first place, do not get it. And if they, along with a local government of questionable motivation, prevail in the quest to rid Chester County of a fine tradition, what will replace it? Nameless, faceless inanity…and no appreciation of the simple joys of winter mornings. The new should not necessarily rule the old because once these unique qualities of a community are gone, much like when a historic home is torn down, it’s not coming back.
The birds are treating the feeders like diners on a highway, and the usual cardinal
couples (they seem to like to double date at the feeder) have been joined by a bird I have never seen before today (not Mr. Flicker, but an Orchard Oriole).
Truthfully this is a Robert Frost kind of morning. He wrote a lot about snow in his poetry.
By Robert Frost1874–1963 Robert Frost
Whose woods these are I think I know.His house is in the village though;He will not see me stopping hereTo watch his woods fill up with snow.My little horse must think it queerTo stop without a farmhouse nearBetween the woods and frozen lakeThe darkest evening of the year.He gives his harness bells a shakeTo ask if there is some mistake.The only other sound’s the sweepOf easy wind and downy flake.The woods are lovely, dark and deep.But I have promises to keep,And miles to go before I sleep,And miles to go before I sleep.
