Reflections after the polar vortex

Last weekend, after the polar vortex had left and the thaw came to our flatland, Marilyn and I went for a walk in Meadowbrook Park. For weeks, the snow and ice had kept us away. But on Sunday afternoon, with the sun out and temperatures in the fifties, the walking paths were busy with runners, strollers, children exploring—“Come down here, Mom!” one boy called from the edge of the brook. “It’s wonderful!”—all of us glad to be moving, to be outside, to be breathing without seeing our breaths.

Almost all the snow had melted, leaving puddles across the paths where the water had nowhere to drain.

I found myself looking down instead of up, seeing the landscape reflected, inverted, in the water. Bare trees and white clouds below me instead of above—a kind of magic. The landscape new again.