“Go to the nearest window. Look out for a full minute. Write about what you saw.”

I can just turn and look out my office window and the world out there looks like a freshly shaken snow globe. Everything is covered in snow and the wind is carrying snowflakes in a slow gamboling gyre. The tree just beyond my window has lost all of it’s leaves except for one dead branch that apparently can’t lose it’s leaves – perhaps they are permanently attached and just won’t fall off. Beyond that there is the start of the vine neighborhood ghetto that lines up against Austin Street. This particular street is comically steep and usually very slippery. Nobody parks out there during the winter because usually as cars try to climb the grade they tend to slide left and right bouncing into other cars and leaving some pretty breathtaking property damage. The ground is speckled with footprints of various creatures. Humans, deer, rabbits, and squirrels. The trees are loaded with snow and the pines across the way look to be strained with their ponderous load of white snow.

This is only the beginning as tonight the lake effect snow bands will shift towards us again and much of this will be covered over by the blizzard of snow to come. Visibility will be lost and all of the colors and the road and the tracks will be obliterated by the thick blanket of snow.