A tiny little step

I had a little bit of snow last night. As you can tell from today’s photo, it was a really little bit. I don’t think it’s enough to call it a dusting, though it would have dusted if I’d had a bit more of it. The biggest news about this little snow is simply that the ground here on Roundtop is now cold enough for the snow to lay there and not melt the instant a flake hits it. One step closer to winter.

Actually, the entire year is a series of these little tiny steps, one step closer to this season, one step further from that one. Occasionally, the steps moving closer or further from a season are big ones, but that’s not the most common way a year turns. Usually the steps are tiny, and sometimes they are almost too tiny to notice.

I’ve always loved looking for these tiny steps. I hate it when I don’t notice a change until it’s such a big one that it slaps me in the face. Those make me feel as though I’ve been asleep at the switch and probably deserve that slap. They also make me wonder what else I’ve missed.

Sometimes in our daily lives, nothing much does change, so it’s easy to get lulled into not noticing little changes anywhere around us. The furniture is still in the same spot it was yesterday. The car is the same one you’ve had for years. We get out of the habit of looking for change.

The natural world reminds me that change is always happening, and those changes are noticeable if you take a few moments to look for them. Paying attention to the little changes around me usually makes the bigger ones seem less of a surprise. I can see them coming.