My wishes for you this holiday season: a feeling of wonder at the beauty around us, an appreciation of the family and friends we hold dear, a remembrance of those people no longer in our lives physically, and a sense of joy and happiness kept within our hearts not only during the holidays but each and every day too. Merry Christmas!
Saint Paul
Brightness of a winter morning
Our landscape is white and the skies have been quite gray and overcast – the gun-metal gray of winter. The days are short and the darkness sometimes seems especially long. This morning I got up before dawn and was drinking my coffee and reading the newspaper. I eventually looked up and noticed the brightness of the morning had started to take over the black sky. As I stepped out the front door, the blue of the sky and the white of the clouds caught my eye; it was a beautiful contrast and a welcome splash of color that we had been missing the past week. The trees are leafless structures now, thrusting their branches up and out, and the cotton-like clouds seemed to be catching on the branches of the tree as they were moving by.
A week’s slide into winter
Our landscape that was brown and cold last week has been transformed into winter. Daytime temperatures in the single digits, subzero temps at night, and snow have brought the look and feel of winter. Ponds and lakes that were previously frozen with clear ice are now covered with snow, and are once again being populated with fish houses. The ducks and geese have all headed south in search of open water. And we are learning again how to drive in ice and snow. How quickly this seasonal change has taken place!
Frost and ice in the morning
Our temperatures have been dropping at night causing the sloughs and lakes to begin their ice-over. It isn’t thick by any means, but it is the start of our shift from fall to winter. I’ve always enjoyed the reflections of trees and horizons in water, and the change over to ice gives these same reflections a much different look. The lines are softer and more muted, and until our lakes are snow-covered the reflections can sometimes be almost mirror-like. On this morning two days ago, the sun was burning through the cold temperatures and the heavy frost causing the landscape to glow in the early light.
Minnesota State Capitol Building at night
We recently took a special starlight tour of the Minnesota State Capitol Building, one of the most majestic and beautiful buildings in Saint Paul. Designed in the late 1890’s by Cass Gilbert and opened to the public in January, 1905, the building towers over the city. The exterior is made of white marble and granite, and the unsupported marble dome is the second largest in the world. At the center of the first floor, under the massive dome, is a brass and glass star representing the North Star State. We toured the chambers of the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the Supreme Court, and we climbed to the roof and the base of the capitol dome to see the golden sculpture that’s called the Quadriga. Titled “The Progress of the State” it is a chariot drawn by four horses representing the powers of nature: earth, wind, fire, and water. At night the statues, which are covered with gold leaf, glow with the warmth of the lights illuminating them. From this high vantage point we could see the Cathedral of St. Paul which is down the boulevard from the Capitol, we could see the lights of the High Bridge spanning the Mississippi River, and we could look across the western sky to the downtown skyline of Minneapolis. It was the perfect late summer night to take in the beauty of this wonderful building and its surroundings.
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