Monday morning, we woke up to a layer of frozen stuff that fell in the night. It was thin, almost more condensation than falling precipitation. This was forecast; no surprise. For the rest of Monday, the frozen precipitation did come. Sleet. Freezing rain. Ice. Maybe even some snow. By the end of Monday daylight, it had accumulated to perhaps an inch, maybe less.

Tuesday dawned cold, around 18° F and cloudy. Mid-morning brought some more frozen precip—again as predicted—though not as long as expected. Maybe a little more accumulation.

I didn’t leave the house for these two days, not even to check the mail. The farthest I went was one step onto the deck to strew birdseed. We stayed inside, did inside tasks, and, to some extent took it easy. Put away a few Christmas decorations. I was glad that I got some yardwork done on Saturday.

I spent my usual time in the chilly sunroom, including some looking out the window time. Behind our house is a valley, known in these parts as a hollow, or “holler”. The photo above is from the sunroom. If you click on the photo to get it full screen, then enlarge it as much as possible and pan around, a few features come out, features that are totally obscured by forest vegetation seven or eight months a year, and features that can’t be seen except when show highlights them.

One of the features is three white “ribbons”—strips of land that are significantly lighter than adjacent areas. At the bottom of the valley is the channel bottom, covered with light-colored gravel. Up just a little higher is part of the Tunnel Vision Trail. Built in 2019 to early 2020, this trail forms a 20 mile loop in western Bella Vista, popular with mountain bikers. That is also light-colored and visible in winter months even when there is no snow.

Then, up at the top of the photo, hard to see, is a strip that is a road going up the hill on the opposite side of the valley. I saw those clearly Monday night and Tuesday morning. Alas, by the time I snapped this photo, the City had run the plow up the road. If you look closely, you can see a black ribbon. That’s the road. It is totally not visible except when snow highlights it, in this case the absence of snow shows where it is.

Other features that can be seen near the top of the photo are two houses. You can see the white roof of one. It’s on the far side of the black ribbon road, just right of the vertical projection of the evergreen tree near the bottom. The other is harder to see. It appears as a dark rectangle, partly obscured by tree trunks. This is the house that is closest to us across the holler, on this side of the black ribbon road, 700 feet as the crow flies. These two houses are barely discernable during normal winter conditions. The tree trunks reduce visibility that much.

There’s a metaphor somewhere in all of this, but I can’t tell what it is. Remove the foliage of life to see more of the background. Add a little adversity to see things even more clearly. Enlarge the vignette to see more details. I suppose I ought to explore that some.

All of which is so many words that doesn’t get me anywhere down roads I want to travel. Oh, I suppose better usage and description of metaphors would help me. My main concern Tuesday evening, when I began writing this post, was would I be able to get out of my driveway on Thursday to be able to attend the afternoon meeting of the Scribblers & Scribes critique group? That’s the road I need to travel next. By then the roads should be good enough to drive, but will I be able to get up the 50 feet of driveway to the street?

All of this is hurting my head. Too much thinking for a Tuesday night after a full day of editing, reading, and disaccumulating. I’ll add an update just before posting this on Friday.