this is a strange time of year… here in indiana it is so depressing to me.  i have always disliked the winter and the way the beautiful blanket of pure white snow eventually turns slush grey from traffic and sand and general gunk.  it is an odd time where the geese start being seen and i remember years ago living in bloomington and thinking about how the slate sky and the slushy old snow and the limestone buildings all seemed to blend into one grey mass of blah and the season that is winter swallowed me alive and would not spit me back out until flurries turned back into warm rain showers and the tulips and poppies started showing their green buds and i could finally breathe deep again because it was spring.  winter in the pacific northwest is unexplicably beautiful.  i fell so deeply in Love with winter there that i often turn my thoughts back to my favorite season on the west coast… everything in the winter came alive.  the pine trees looked a deeper green.  the moss that would pop out on roadsides and over logs and branches of deciduous trees was thick and lemon-lime colored.  the air was so fresh all the time… the rain made everything shimmer with special light.  the morning dew was crystal clear and made my lawn look like a tiny ocean… all the droplets frozen in a moment of time.  there was something about winter there.  the few occasions it did snow i would walk around my neighborhood and let the flakes fall over me.  i felt like a child with the clean white hitting my eyelids, my fingers, my hair.  there was never enough snow to get slush grey and there was something about all that cold rain and warming up to the wood stove each night.  there was something about the winter there that holds my heart.  and i never knew that i would warm up so incredibly to what we know is the cold season.