Slip slide

It was white outside, a good day to work at home. White, snow, changing...

I took a mid-day break for a walk. A hawk was sitting high in a tree, surveying the world through quietly falling snow. I walked under his perch, walked a little further and turned to see him from the front. What a beautiful bird!

The snow fell on dry ground, and yet, it was slippery. It almost seemed as if there was a sheen of ice under that snow. On plowed surfaces, my footing was steady. On previously shoveled sidewalks wearing a coating of new snow? Slippery!

By the time I returned home, the soft snow had turned into some other form of frozen precipitation, sharp pellets hitting my face. And now? It's raining. Snow, accumulating snow, freezing rain, freezing fog, outright rain. Brrr...