About 50 minutes before sunset, I walked by the lake. Saturday’s blizzard had left everything covered in snow. Even the Chicago Park District plows had not gotten all the snow off the walking paths. Someone had made an odd snowman, a big trunk with a triangular head rather than the traditional three spheres of decreasing size upwards. Perhaps it was a depiction of an alien snowman. Elsewhere, someone had lain down next to the path and flapped a perfect snow angel.

Surprisingly, despite the barrage of snow yesterday, there were several places where the grass was peeking out from under a very thin layer of snow. The ice on the lake, which had looked solid only a couple of days ago, is breaking up into little islands with expanses of water in between. You could almost envision burly polar bears leaping from one to the next, or tired seals crawling out onto them. (Although none of them are that solid!)

It was the sky and the water, though, that caught my eye. The eastern sky was an odd shade of pinkish gray around the horizon, where it reflected the setting sun. The sky overhead was almost a sea green, and the sea green and pinkish gray were perfectly reflected in the open water. The colours were exquisitely varied and subtle. Even Monet would have been hard pressed to have captured the nature of the colour and the light.

Above it all, a hand’s breadth above the horizon, a nearly full moon was taking over the dying day.

Sigh.

This is living. Everything else is a dream. A bad one.