The Quiet Language of Snow

I was walking home through the park this morning when I saw a pair of mittens sitting abandoned on a bench. They were tiny, bright red, and dusted with a thin layer of frost. For a second, I felt a sharp pang of worry, wondering where the hands that belonged to them had gone. Then I heard a distant, muffled shout of laughter from behind the trees. It was just a moment of play, a brief departure from the cold, but it reminded me how easily we forget the weightlessness of being young. When we are small, the world is not a place to be navigated or conquered; it is simply a backdrop for discovery. We don’t worry about the chill in the air or the time of day. We only know the crunch of the ground beneath our boots and the sound of someone else’s joy echoing back at us. Do you remember the last time you let yourself be completely absorbed by the weather?

Anastasia Markus has captured this exact feeling in her beautiful image titled Children in the Winter Forest. It feels like a quiet, frozen breath of pure happiness. Does this scene bring back any specific winter memories for you?