If I could explain to you how wondrous the hoar frost looked this morning, I would try to tell you how it looked like a silent hand had passed over the landscape through the night, flocking each bare tree with delicate flakes of diamond-like crystals, so that when the sun rose their brown bones were transformed into twinkling winter magic, ice reflecting the radiance but not containing it. It is a very small thing, to be awestruck into silence by the simple beauty of the rare hoar frost. But it was enough to encourage my soul’s pilot-light of hope into a stronger flame.

That is what I would tell you if I could.