Snow-laden Spruce Tree (© Magi Nams)

At 9 a.m., snowflakes fluttered down in thin confusion, no longer yesterday’s dense, wind-slanted sheets of dry, white precipitation. Diminished residue of a vast snowstorm that yesterday swept eastward from Ontario and Illinois, dumping tens of centimetres of snow in its wake, our fresh snow this morning rested in thick mounds on spruce boughs, as though the white stuff were deep, generous gobs of marshmallow icing applied by an overly enthusiastic cook. The beleaguered spruce twigs bearing the weight of that generosity protruded from the mounds like hundreds of frosted fingers pointing in desperation at the earth blanketed with graceful drifts and curves of snow a metre or more deep.

For the first time that I can recall, the snow surface matched the rim of our backyard trampoline for height. It rose in elegant sweeps over the picnic table, the pile of uncut firewood, and the snow ziggurat my son Janis constructed more than a month ago, which has been well-preserved by the cold weather we’ve experienced since Vilis and I returned to Nova Scotia in late December.

Snowshoeing Trail (© Magi Nams)

Donning snowshoes, I stepped up onto the snow from our porch deck and headed down the hill from our house, my snowshoes sinking 15 centimetres into the fluffy powder with each step, yet maintaining my weight above the remaining depths of snow. Silence surrounded me, broken only by fleeting calls of black-capped chickadees. Instead, snow-lined branches told tree stories of birch and maple, spruce and poplar, pincherry and alder. On the steep slope above Matheson Brook, big-toothed aspens soared into the winter sky, their trunks pocked with cavities excavated by woodpeckers and employed by northern flickers as nesting sites during the summer. Beech leaves the colour of washed-out amber rustled in the breeze, and flags of birch bark dangled from trunks and flapped with scraping restlessness. The unopened catkins of a clump of alder at the brook’s edge dangled like a dress comprised of slim, brown pendants.

Grey Birch Bark (© Magi Nams)

Beech Leaves and Snow-lined Spruces (© Magi Nams)

The entire scene before me – snow, brook, shrubs, trees – had the feel of a pen and ink drawing. Reduced to the simplicity of white and dark, it exuded both a sense of peace and one of exquisite elegance. Its almost colourless beauty was far more subtle than spring’s verdant greens, summer’s profusion of vivid blossoms and fruits, and autumn’s flaming leaves. It was a beauty of shape and texture highlighted by snow and without the distraction of flamboyance.

Winter on Matheson Brook (© Magi Nams)

A watercolour artist I know says she prefers to use a limited palette. Winter, too, employs a limited palette – the subdued greens of conifer needles, the muted greys and browns of bark and woody bud scales, the shifting shades of blue and grey in sky and shadow, all these contrasted with the searing white of snow. Yet this morning, I found burgundy in the bark of pincherries, gold in that of yellow birch, and pale amber in the rustling, tenacious leaves of beech trees. Perhaps it is the gift of winter’s elegant simplicity that it leads us to stare in fascination at minute details of bark and study the skeletons of trees.

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