Back on December 5th, 2025, I awoke to a minus-1 inch snow after the weatherman had called for a couple of inches the day before. It wasn’t enough to really cover anything; just a trace, kind of like one of those trace elements listed on the Periodic Table of Elements, of which of each, there is, well, just a trace.

But although there wasn’t enough snow to fully cover things, what it covered proved to be revealing (paradox).

From where I first look out every morning, there is a gap in a small wood in which can be seen a nice-size “hill” of leaves which has seemingly grown naturally by leaf fall over the years, not raked and piled up by man (but even if deposited there by a leaf blower, they would have still been “Untouched by human hands”).

That leaf pile normally looks like a uniform, dark clump; but the skim of snow scattered upon it has made it go from a two-dimensional “clump” to a hint of 3-D. But not too-much 3-D, the top leaves just appearing to be “peeled from the pile” a little, not “leaping out” like the objects in a really scary 3-D movie!

As for the few scattered leaves remaining in the yard, some of them didn’t fall flat to the ground, but landed with a “twist.” The little bit of snow didn’t totally obscure them, but left leaf tips sticking out from it at various angles, highlighting their individuality.

The hanging vines in the woods had previously matched the tree trunks’ gray bark, in a kind of camouflage. But that trace of snow was enough to give each one of them some resemblance to that white “filament” of falling water known as Yosemite’s Horsetail Fall.

Even the old, long-abandoned clothesline pole looked newer, with its rust having been “touched up!”

A nearby oak tree had been transformed into what looked like a 30 ft.-tall cotton plant, with small “cotton balls” growing from places, which had not very long ago sprouted acorn clusters (but unlike regular fruit, this “fruit” was impervious to frost and freezing).

This little amount of snow seemed to have changed the whole scene so much that it reminded me of those times when painter Bob Ross saw where just a little something else was needed to bring out the features of one of his paintings; so, he used just the edge of a paint-dipped knife, or the tip of a paint-dipped brush.

As I looked about to see in what other ways the landscape had changed, I noticed that those things around me which had been altered to resemble something new, were gradually becoming “old” again, like before. (After all, the weather report had predicted that with time, the snow would turn to rain).

The next morning, December 6th, I looked outside, and what I saw made me think the previous day’s landscape-altering trace of snow had repeated itself!

But then, I put on my glasses and realized it was just a heavy frost which had unsuccessfully mimicked the “wonders” I had seen the day before.

There was no painted nuance, only a frozen, one-dimensional encapsulation of everything inside a couple millimeters of transparent ice.

Nothing to write “HOME” about.