1. The snow, once I stopped complaining about it, was quite beautiful. It arrived with some force (not pictured) and retreated with grace and dignity.
2. Defying all expectations, the flowers didn’t seem too bothered by the cold or the snow. They were prepared for anything.
3. Still, it was difficult to believe that it was late March 2018, a year that will go down in history as one of the hottest on record (but not as hot as what’s coming).
4. Sometimes the park seems like one of those magical places you find in fantasy novels — often inhabited by elves and sacred trees — where you find calm and immortality but also a creeping despair as news of the world’s destruction arrives by way of visitors from the outside. Soon enough, one of the trees gets sick and it’s time for the forces of good to venture out and stop whatever evil is killing everything.
5. Unfortunately the real world is more complicated than any novel (except Infinite Jest).
6. I’m not an advocate of “hope,” which too often seems to fall into the same category of denial as “thoughts and prayers,” but here in the park, as I noticed the small, dependable changes — the ones that remind us of the passing seasons and a functioning world — I allowed myself a reprieve from my usual pessimism. The flowers didn’t mind, because they knew.
7. There is always life under a blanket of snow.
