It’s mid-February and an unexpected snow storm turned Portland into a winter wonderland. For a hot minute, I fretted over my emerging tulips that thought it was spring only a week before. And then I remembered, the only thing we can expect is the unexpected.
A combination of bright light and freezing temperatures created a blanket of ice over the city. Giant Linden trees transformed into crystal chandeliers overnight. The next morning, in a moment of playful whimsy, Mother Nature ran her fingers through the trees to hear them chime. The ice looked like twinkling diamonds before it cracked down from the sky in a crashing thud of a crescendo.
It takes a blanket of snow and a power outage to quiet a city like this. For a while, the world is perfect and beautiful and still. Such moments are rare. The only way to remember them is to surrender fully. So I pulled a chair onto the front step, wrapped myself in a blanket and listened: cha-cling, cha-cling…pum, pum, pum.