A friend in Kansas City who has just returned from a vacation in Florida now has a new photo of a place where a manatee just was. That photo will sit in the family album beside the photo of the place where a dolphin just was.

On Monday, during the drive home from a work day abbreviated by the midday cancellation of classes, I stopped the car and tromped through a fresh snowscape to a creek lined with cottonwoods where I was lucky enough to capture this scene where a cardinal had just been.

Tuesday morning, I was slower than a cardinal but faster than a cloud bank when I photographed an aquamarine sky squinting from the eastern horizon before gray clouds returned the earth to silver and eventually to gray.

There is beauty here in winter, but spring cannot come soon enough.