“There’s a silence in snowy dawn that forces you to look anew at what has been transformed from the customary landscape of your day-to-day life. Dogwoods glisten in their silver finery; bowing fir limbs form a secret cathedral.”

My daughters were born in Tampa, Florida, which meant they had never seen snow. This deprivation changed when we moved to Chatham, Virginia, in time for the worst snowstorm the area had seen in over sixty years. If that hadn’t given us our share of snow, we moved to Chattanooga the following year, where, in January, it snowed ten inches, the most snow seen in the town since 1960.