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Today, St. Louis was graced with our first snow of the year, and with it all the trials of traffic and travel that come with it. We started with rain all night — nearly two inches — and a quick changeover to large, weighty flakes around midday.

Denny and I went out for lunch, taking the TrailBlazer on its first romp through the freshly fallen (and falling) snow. I was speechless, as the beauty of the first snow of the season took my breath away with its wonderous awe-inspiring beauty.

After getting home, I shot the birds as they flocked to the newly hung feeders, and enjoyed watching the doves try to bully all the other birds away. Doves are apparently weigh just enough to occassionally make the Squirrel Flipper pivot, which caused a ruckus every time.

As night fell, it was obvoius that the only thing that was missing was a big bright moon to light up the snow. The clouds were thick, though, and I felt certain that would not happen tonight. With tomorrow’s warming, the snow would be gone, and the chance for a moonlit wonderland seemed lost.

However, Darla and I just finished watching a film, and in letting the dogs out, we discovered that the sky had cleared tremendously, and the full moon was brightly illuminating the landscape, and the stars were breaking the crystal clear crispness of the night sky. There just aren’t words to describe the beauty, and I don’t have the skills to capture the scene through my lens.

As Darla wrote to friend tonight, sometimes you can’t capture God’s beauty, you just have to experience it. Tonight was a night to experience.