When I wake up it’s impossibly cold, eight degrees, but horses have to be fed regardless of temperature. I’m warm in the house and I would rather stay in and sit with a cup of coffee to ease into the day. Instead I pull on my thick winter clothes, coat, hat, and scarf and step outside.
It’s impossibly beautiful. The sun is bright and it reflects off the snow; it blows off the trees in glittering skeins. The sky is bright blue, a summer sky, and I feel the light on my face as a benediction. My horses are wild with morning and wind and hay in the cart and they run, backlit, in front of the low winter sun. The sparkling snow swirls in the wind and wraps around them like old magic, sleeping in the trees, now awakened. A crow calls from the pines.