Wishful thinking . . .

Still hoping for snow, but alas, it looks as if we'll just get rain and flurries with no accumulation tonight. Realize, I don't want a foot of snow and snarled traffic and - god forbid - cancelled school . . . but a good 6 inches can really make the city beautiful, particularly Central Park. Olmsted and Vaux certainly hit a homerun on that project. No doubt it's my favorite place in the city . . . certainly when there aren't many people in the Park, as on a snowy weekday morning when I took this photo a couple of years ago. The Park, the trees already muffling some of the city's noise, becomes eerily quiet on snowy days, the noise of the surrounding metropolis reduced to a hiss, a pleasant "white noise" inviting pauses on the Mall or looking across the Sheep Meadow. Bow Bridge becomes an image drawn from a fairy tale and the Boat Pond (the Conversatory Water, if you're looking at a map of Central Park) begs for visitors to clear the snow from a bench and sit.

Now, if I just had the snow and the friend with whom to sit, I'd be in a happy place indeed.