Winter Wonderland

On December 23, we drove north from Limoges to Partheney, in the Deux-Sevres departement. I've driven this road countless times, and the landscape is quite familiar: rolling green hills punctuated with small villages (each with their medieval church, of course). I can pinpoint all the landmarks along the way, including exactly when the nuclear reactors will loom into view. But on this trip, these familiar landscapes were breathtakingly beautiful and I kept gasping with delight. Arm extended out the window, I couldn't stop taking pictures.

The fields were dusted with white frost, and the trees were encased in a dazzling sheath of ice. It looked like snow, but the skies were blue and we hadn't seen any real weather change in weeks. And for a few fleeting days, we experienced real winter. Cold, biting wind, greyish skies, a world painted in white. Now the days are spring-like and warm and for the first time in my life, I'm actually wishing for another taste of the winter we lost too soon.