An early morning walk down the lane behind the house, a small woodlot of a few acres on my right. On the left, screened by a copse on the edge, runs a long steep pasture. At the far end lies a fallen oak straddling the two worlds. I sit on the trunk with Tip and watch the sun rise on one of my favorite views.

The pasture is smooth, clear of any obstruction, rock or tree. The grass is short and green, covered with a thick sheen of white crystals left from Jack Frost’s nightly visit. The pasture has folds and hills as it rises up the ridge. A starkly sensual sight as the sun rises and illumines through leafless trees selective contours of the land.

The blankets of frost quickly disappear in streaks where the sun touches the hill. In minutes the pasture is rippled with stripes of green. It will be another hour before the sun will vanquish the frost from the pastures. Another hour yet before all the remains of a cold night will be the skim of ice on water troughs and crunch of grass in shade of the porch.

From my desk, as I write, the view is of the chicken yard and coop. The light has crested the hill and hit the coop window, a window of ancient and honorable pedigree. A large rectangular piece of zinc lined glass, each pane four inches square of distorted lines from a pre-mass production furnace. The window, one of a handful rescued from the Jacobs Agricultural Building at Chilhowee Park when it burned around 1900. A grand palace of a now vanished agricultural heritage, its relic gives reflected light to our hens on their roosts.