Thanksgiving morning we awoke to steel-gray skies and bare grass –  on the late end of autumn.  As the morning progressed, the first snow began to fall.  In sheets of white, it settled on the grass and the trees, the shrubs and the plants.  It’s coating was magical and beautiful, as if saying that autumn was past, and winter was moving in.  I realized that I was looking forward to winter’s first snowfall, and I felt like a child —  I marveled at the whiteness and how it seemed to make everything clean.  As I headed out with my camera, the world seemed new to me.  The lines between open water and ice were forming.  The outline of trees became more noticeable as they were coated in white and stood stark in the landscape.  The geese were high overhead, winging their way to open water, fields for food, or further south.  And the gray skies overhead kept the sky close in — the time of winter and quiet, the time to reflect and recharge.