Odd and Complementing. (Muck/Snow)

Ah, Minnesota Winter. Bountiful skies of crisp clean air infiltrating my nostrils as I step over the threshold of my apt. into ankle deep crystals of minuscule dimension and color covering the 6x6 area of the deck one story above the frozen dirt below my feet.

My eyes catch the glint of a thousand colors dancing across the roofs of houses, cars and covering lawns as the sun brings the snow to glittering life. A cold wind makes me glad I own this scarf wrapped so completely and ever so stylishly around my neck, and the snow rising up and over the walls of leather my shoes supply does cause me to wonder if I should wear boots...?

Walking down those treacherous 6 or 7 steps to the driveway where my car waits to begin warming for the journey ahead, I think of how terrible it would be to slip up and crash and burn. Or freeze. Whatever.

The snow plow came by and mixed the purity of the snow on the curb with the darkness of earth, tar and decaying road. The end of my driveway is a new street side curb. Good thing I have all wheel drive. Though the mixture of frozen elements is ugly, I'm somehow captured by the odd, yet, complementing mutuality between the two; One being amassed of filth, the other of beauty, and fresh.

Can the two co-exsist? Well, in fact, they do, which intrigues me. For such blatant purity is crossed by unfathomably soiled grime, and so makes a way to walk, drive and operate through the lastingness of the cold. Throughout this time of year, there is bitterness and there is peace that passes all understanding among it, right here, right now.

I'm on this earth, and yet, the Truth of Redemption in my dreams is more real to me than this trodden sod. The conflict between me and God is sad. But that's the redeeming factor, that I'm a failure and He is mercy that brings me back to life. For after the stillness and death of Winter, there comes renewed emergence of something that is alive. And the contrast of snow and dirt are remembered, when, from the ground, a beauty is revived.

That's the beauty of a snow-plowed Minnesota Winter.

Andrew R. M. Hanson