Welcome to Winter

Winter is the sort of thing that you can see coming, it is gradual as the days grow shorter and the temperature declines but the for most of us winter means snow on the ground, snow that stays on the ground for the next six months.

This is when it happens each year in this part of Canada, this is when we put away the fall jacket and have the gloves handy.

The snow cover has been a little more obvious around Naicam and we saw ski-doo tracks at Spalding Saturday night. But for us, therre was just the absence of colour as the bits of snow soaked up the landscape. It has snowed a little all day today and the landscape has turned white.

The town has been out sanding the streets to prevent

this snowfall from becoming a site for fender benders.

I noticed the traffic when I took these pictures was taking the care that slipper surfaces require but I also noticed a kind of excitement. As a kid the coming of winter was big news, it meant the drabness of late fall was replaced with new adventures as our young lives marked the time as advancing. Being old does not wash away the excitement of a new season and the promise of cold and more cold as Robert Browning said, "If winter comes can spring be far behind."

This weekend its the Grey Cup, stores have their Christmas stuff out and on TV the commercials have showed some restraint this year and only a few Christmas sell jobs have appeared.

This is the winter of 2006 - 2007 we can expect a fairly snowy winter like last year and yet the mild trend of the last few years will continue. Let's make the best of it, one crisp day at a time.