I used to love snow. Snow meant snowmen, sledding, snowball fights, and snow forts. Best of all snowstorms meant no school and playing with friends outdoors all day. I didn’t care about the cold. I’d come inside with my fingers and toes frozen, my neck chilled from all the snow that made its way down into my coat, and my face bright red and chapped. What did it matter when afterward the house was cozy, blankets were snuggly and homemade hot chocolate warmed you way down deep inside?

As I grew out of playing in the snow, I appreciated all the cliché things everyone loves, like the enchanted feeling of waking to a fresh blanket of white, the quiet stillness after a storm, and the sparkling sunlight on white tipped tree branches.

Nowadays, however, I don’t have quite the excited or poetic feelings for snow. I resent having to shovel it. I dislike getting up extra early just to de-ice and dig out my car. I hate white knuckling the steering wheel driving to or from work on slippery slushy roads. And the cold I didn’t care about as a child drives me crazy now.

Even so, I still see one great thing about the white coated ground. And it is even more special than a day off school or sparkly white branches. It’s that I get to know my neighbors. No, I don’t mean the people who live on my street. I’m talking about the wildlife surrounding me.

I love all the tracks that crisscross my yard leaving evidence of just who lives nearby. The snow reveals their habits, their hiding places, where they find food, and how they move. Squirrels, birds, rabbits, racoons, wild turkeys, chipmunks, and even the occasional fox or deer leave behind a story in their little footprints. I get to see the amazing activity I never knew happened right on my own little piece of Earth. It is a gentle reminder, too, that we share this earth with so many others. Animals are here, all around us, needing this space as much as we humans do, to do their thing and live their lives, in unseen beauty.