Snow!

I love that snow muffles everything...it's so quiet and peaceful. I remember when I was a kid, playing in snowbanks with my brother, and getting so tired from hauling my limbs through the snow, I'd collapse in the snow, and lay there and listen...listen to the snow crunch and squeak under my body as I moved, watch the flakes falling on my lashes, inspect each flake before it melted and coated my lashes. Laying there, I'd listen to my own breathing, watch it puff out in a billowing cloud that no sooner appeared than vanished into the cold, winter air. Everything was white - the tree limbs coated, windowsills, and walkways - one of the few times everything is clean. We'd sit there in the snow, my brother and I, eating it, molding it, making snowmen... recuperating until the next snowball fight began, our shrieks traveling only to the next yard before being absorbed by the clean, white layer of peace that had decended on our neighborhood overnight.