The Wonders of Winter

 My driveway is almost 100 feet long.  This past Saturday, I required my almost-43-year-old elbows to shovel 4 inches of snow off that driveway, and I was hurting by the time I finished the chore.  Back when said elbows were 18, their biggest task was to sit defiantly on tables while I practiced looking fashionably bored.  The elbows participated in creating a whole persona of the trendily angst-laden adolescent with Depeche Mode on the Walkman.  Ah, but that's just another injustice of life: increased responsibilities come at the same time as decreased capacities, like failing joints.  I'm just grateful for the winter, and if it means shoveling snow, so be it.  

Last winter was a disappointment.  Soggy, gray, snowless, chilly, but never really cold.  It was like 90 bleak days of late November, whose beauty grows old after about three weeks.  This time around, it looks as if a good, respectable winter will be with us for the foreseeable future.  And I'll begin the New Year with an early morning trek.  There are few things better than the woods under snow.