Carol had to be at Church early so both she and I were up well before dawn to shovel out the cars and driveway. Before last night’s storm, we had a good six inches of snow on the ground that fell wet and and packed down, and we woke to about 8 inches of new snow on top of that. It has been a long time since we had this much snow on the ground. And, unlike the Christmas Day storm, the snow last night stuck on the trees, creating a more traditional winter-wonderland look.

I had to try for a few before-dawn ambient-light shots…straining the limits of even the Hand-held Night Scene Mode on the Canon SX50HS. Even with exposure stacking, the recorded ISO was 6400, and while the images were pretty amazing for what they were from a small sensor camera…they required some additional noise reduction and some fiddling with shadow and high-light colors to be really pleasing renditions of the scene. Still. It is totally awesome to get anything at all in this kind of light! And hand held at that.

That is the moon showing through the pre-dawn snow clouds and the snowy trees.

By the time we had finished, first light had come.

And for the Sunday thought: The God who has commanded my faith is a desert God, but the faith is at home in any kind of adverse conditions. The desert puts a constant strain on life…on living. Mindfulness is required all the time just to stay alive. Oaseses are few and far between, and the days of green plenty are short and separated by long dry seasons. The home is a place of shade, relative coolness, and comfort. While God transcends all time and place, the metaphors of my faith were formed in the desert…and it is impossible to completely escape the ways that shapes my understanding of life and spirituality.

For us in the Temperate Zone, winter is our desert, producing, if we let it, something of that same desert mindset. I go out to shovel snow before dawn, but also to encounter my God in the extremes. It is good for faith. It is good to come in the warm house, and settle back with tea and give thanks.

Later on I will go back out into the white desert of the day to find some images with more light. But for now, it is a Happy Sunday morning. Dawn has come. Thank God.