After taking out the trash this afternoon, I found myself just standing there in the falling snow, looking out at my backyard and the field and park beyond it. Snowflakes swirled around me in the wind, the world was white and clean, the trees reaching up their bare arms to a grey sky. Yes, it was cold; yes, it’s winter and dreary. But what I love about it was there. Indiana in the winter has this profound, beautiful silence, if you will allow yourself to be still enough to enjoy it.

The cold, clean scent of winter was refreshing. The silence was heartening. It was just a moment but one that I sorely needed.