It’s snowing this morning. If it’s snowing where you are, you might be saying, “Yuck!” If you’re somewhere else where it isn’t snowing it might be, “Sucks being you.” My question is, “Why does snow suck?” It’s bright, it’s clean, so not really “yucky” at all. Okay, it comes with colder weather but why is that so bad? I have sweaters, many of them, and nice ones. If it didn’t get cold I wouldn’t have a chance to wear them.

Last spring my mother was returning home to northern British Columbia after spending part of the winter in the Okanagan Valley where spring arrives a little earlier. The scenery transformed from green leaves to pre-leaf fuzzies to what she called black skeleton branches. In her words, “even the skeletons are beautiful if you keep an open mind.” She inspired what will be a recurring theme in this blog, that beauty is relative; it depends on your perspective, your personality and your attitude.

Granted, there are places and people and things that are generally labelled as beautiful and others that aren’t. I live in one of those “aren’t” places. The big flat of the Canadian prairie – a boring landscape with a harsh climate, or so many people think. I know, because I used to be one of them. That was before I took a closer look and listen and smell. Is the land flat? Yes, generally. Boring? Not a bit. Is the climate harsh? It certainly can be, but with a fierce kind of beauty that you have to admire.

There’s magic in discovering the beauty of where you are, the kind of magic not found on a tropical vacation.