Upon A Cold Morning

This morning the world did not come to an end, just as it had not come to an end on any of the million previous mornings. It was a cold morning though, seven degrees above zero Fahrenheit, which made it feel as if the whole world was going to freeze over.

The snow from the previous day had been coated with a gossamer veil of ice during the night, and there was a thin sheet of ice on the road - it made for a challenging drive until the main road was reached, where the wheels of the cars that had already driven by had broken up the ice enough to make driving fairly safe.

The cold of morning in Lakewood can be a beautiful thing. The first warm rays of the sun low on the horizon produce a light mist as the millimeter thin sheen of ice begins to evaporate. 

Bear Creek, which runs south to north through Bear Valley, is deep enough in areas, and the flow fast enough throughout it's course, so that it never completely freezes over. Ice does develop in the shallow eddys and pools that form where small tributaries have branched off, and as the sun rises higher in the cloudless sky of the morning, small platters of ice will begin to break off and float away like runaway barges on a miniature Mississippi.

Dressed warmly enough, a walk along one of the trails that parallel the creek can be at once both peaceful and invigorating. The quiet of the morning broken only by the gurgling of the water rushing past and the geese shifting in the open water.