This morning when I came downstairs in the dark...
...there was a heap of coals still red-hot in the wood stove. Maggie had banked them last night. It made it very easy to get the fire started.
About 10 minutes after she left to take Seth to an early morning soccer practice, there was a call on my cell phone - Maggie again, "You gotta get outside and check out the light - the sun is just coming up and it is fantastic." I put on my warm things, and decided to go down to the new conservation area along the river on the north end of town.
The light she had said, it is glowing. That's how I found it. I followed some snow shoe prints left from the day before down to the river. In the flood plain these plants stood silent, coated with frost as the sun filtered through the trees from the south side of the river.
