OldTroubador's blog post - Winter - Beauty and the xxxxx

I rolled out of Jeffersonville, OH a couple of hours before the sun climbed over the hills to the east. I was headed south through Cincinnati, OH, Louisville, KY, and Nashville, TN before setting the brakes in Birmingham, AL. Not long after putting Louisville in my rear view mirrors, I had my windows down. My left arm hung out the window, acquiring the first installment of this year's driver's tan (left arm done to a beautiful brown; the rest of my body as white as a toad's underbelly). As the sun warmed my skin and Molly Hatchet and Blackfoot bellowed from the speakers, I had a chance to reflect on the past eight weeks of winter.
By all accounts, this has been a rough winter. Even though I missed most of the worst of the storms, a few did catch up with me Driving conditions were horrendous from Louisiana over to North Carolina north into Virginia, West Virginia, and Ohio, and one storm in Illinois. Louisiana was totally closed for a day and a half due to the icing of the highways (this eventually effected the whole Gulf Coast region, but luckily, I did not have to deal with all that). It's just as well the highways were eventually closed as I nearly lost control of the Freebird a couple dozen times before I could find a place to park. A week ago, I had to get USA Truck to pay $350 a towing company to help get me started on a hill after the state of North Carolina closed the highway. A dozen other trucks in my line of sight had to pay the same. It mattered not that, as soon as my wheels were rolling, I had to lean on the horn and throttle back to keep from running over the tow truck. And just a few days ago, a winter storm caught Illinois by surprise; they struggled to get ahead of the sloppy roads as we fought to keep from sliding off into the woods.
The polar vortex also effected how I drove the highways. From Minnesota and Wisconsin down through the Midwest to Kansas City, temperatures were so far below zero that the salt spread on the highway could not melt the ice. We all had to adjust our speed to deal with the hundreds of miles of black ice. Those that didn't soon paid for their carelessness as they found themselves in ditches, the median, the woods, or a farmer's field. At times, where a big rig carved a hole through the trees, scorch marks on the trunks gave evidence of a fire; the depth of the hole, evidence of how hard the truck hit the treeline.
In spite of the extreme cold and the hazards of driving, Mother Nature blessed me time and again with unmatched beauty. Wintertime, with only a few colors, is one of the prettiest seasons of all.
Early in the season, while driving through central Oklahoma, a fog had clung to the hilltops early in the day. I could see the elevation where the temperature dropped below freezing for the trees near the top glistened in crystal finery while those lining the road were just wet. The road climbed into the freezing zone, a glittering faerieland, a magical land of diamond crusted trees. This same wondrous sight was repeated in Louisiana, of all places – live oak and cypress trees transformed by frozen water into Waterford crystal arches over the bayous.
When cuts were blasted through the mountaintops to allow the road to go through, the rock faces served as a canvas for ever-changing ice sculptures. Icicles hundreds of feet long clung to the cliffs. Some were blue, some green, others white, all three hues showcased along the same cut. Long grasses and shrubs hung down from their precarious footholds, weighed down by the coating of ice each wore, fragile glass fringes and tassels adorning the rocks. When the temperature warmed enough, the icicles melted until all that remained was a delicate web of crystalline lace.
One effect of the extreme temperatures was to be found in western Utah. While traveling past the Great Salt Lake and across the salt flats, a heavy fog from the lake blanketed everything. What little grass grew alongside the highway collected the fog which froze. Instead of crystal though, the salt laden ice was of the purest white as it encrusted the grassy tufts in weird caricatures of trees; miniature avant garde forests lining the interstate.
The full-sized trees exhibited their own beauty too. After a snowfall, each limb of the leafless hardwoods was outlined in white, highlighting the starkness of the bare branches. Not to be outdone, the boughs of the pines, spruces, and firs were cloaked in mantles of snow, the weight bending them toward the ground. Occasionally, the snow would become too heavy and slide off, the limp snapping upward, released from its burden and releasing others of theirs. This would set in motion a chain reaction, a cascade of snow as the tree shook itself free of its frozen blanket. Surrounding the tall pines were their offspring - smaller pines just a few years old, huddling together like so many children hiding behind their mothers' skirts.
The waterways coursing under the highways were not immune to the magic of the season. When the creeks and small rivers ran fast enough to remain ice free, many times the water was clear enough to see each individual rock lining the bottom. Other streams were running pale green, a liquid jade river meandering between banks of snow. And yet others ran dark, the cold water black against the white backdrop of the land. In many, large rocks stood tall, capped with snow as the inky waters parted and rolled along each side of these islets. Larger rivers, especially in the north, ran slow enough to freeze solid, allowing easy passage for the woodland creatures to pass from one bank to the other. And in one creekbed, I spied three does pawing at the ice trying to get to the water beneath.
Pristine fields of white lined both sides of the road, unsullied but for the tracks of animals crossing – sometimes in a straight line, sometimes aimlessly, but always with a purpose. Snowdrifts on either side of the road were works of art, sculpted to an infinite number of shapes – some art deco, some avant-garde, some abstract. Others brought to mind curling waves, breakers along a beach highway, highlighting the sea of white blanketing the fields beyond. And in the early part of the morning, as the sun was still only a hint of light in the sky, the drifts in the open reflected the pastel hues of the early morn. Some drifts were still in the shadows but were not drab. Rather, they seemed to have an inner light and glowed in their blue-grayness.
In the morning, the clear dry air and hillsides of leafless tress made awe inspiring spectacles. As the sky lightened from pink to salmon to peach and then orange, it would back-light the forested hills. And for a few moments in time, every branch, every limb, every twig along the ridgetop was seen plainly in stark contrast to the ever-changing pastel pallette behind. Soon the sun would rise fully, obliterating the image, but for a time, the trees were deeply and fully etched against the morning sky.
By now, in deep south Texas, wildflowers are spreading a colorful carpet across the land. A little further north, swamp lilies bloom and sweet gum trees are starting to leaf. The water is warming and catfish, crappie, and bass are moving to the shallows to feed, then spawn. And yet, I still think of winter, the trouble it causes, its hazards, but mostly, its beauty.