“Astonishing. Getting older and older, I still stand here at this window, watching as if never having watched anything like it before – the wrens, juncos, and purple finches picking the seeds strewn on the pile of frozen snow. Through my breath condensing into fog on cold window pane, I still see bare branches chasing their shadows in the icy wind, black threads of water crinkling through fissures in the frozen river. I am aware that what I am seeing is no more, no less than the great Mystery, that of being here at all, that of seeing it – as if from the other side of a mirror – snow, birds, my breath still condensing, that breath that started so long ago as my first cry.” ~~ Frederick Franck