She pretends she hates being outside in the cold, but in all truth she loves it. Trixie, being a husky mix, is in her element in the snow. She rarely stops running, and buries her face in the snow as if it was a blanket. Her normal friskiness is amplified. 
What a little snow puppy.
Something about the snow enchants. The gleaming whiteness and the whisperings of snowflakes cast a spell of silent mirth. Snowfall finds the pup in the dog, the child in the human, and the magic in the air. The dull landscape of winter is transformed into a fairyland. The mundane is made fresh and new. What glory!
From the storehouses of heaven, the snow is given, every drift, every flake. Each snowflake is a unique handiwork, proclaiming the glory of its Creator. Only a loving God would have given us beauty in a snowflake, or a snowfall. And down they fly, countless, peerless, and, as the day wears on, seemingly endless. Even a fall of rimed snow is glorious to behold.
Hills beyond hills fall away into a cloud of silvery grey. Trees rise stark against the white of the earth and the white of the sky and the brilliance of the air. The snow deepens. A breath of wind sweeps a drift. 
As simple and homely a thing as a coil of barbed wire becomes a thing of beauty in this landscape of changed colors and textures. New things are noticed, or old things are noticed anew – The faint and familiar grid of wire fencing, the grain of hundred-year-old wood, the color of old flower stems, the lantern hanging at the corner of the shop roof, the lichen on the fence boards, the rusted chain draped near a fence post, the snow-covered juniper and the white windowsill. 
Silence reigns in the falling snow. It is as if everything stops, except for the piling and mounding of snow, expectant, waiting. Windswept clouds of white curl off the roof and disperse, and drifts are coaxed into being. Every footstep is muffled. It is as if the world holds its breath to see what will happen next, to wake to a new world, a clean world, a renewed world. 
But in the silence there is a wildness, a pent-up energy, a joy waiting to burst forth. It’s in the air, and it gets into the blood, under the skin. Some bundle up and venture out into this frigid world, and are drawn into the spell. In a world enchanted, the cold seems less cold, the biting air seems sweeter, and the searing of each joyous breath is invigorating. The reverent, expectant silence of the snowfall is broken by peals of helpless laughter and sparkling mirth. Snow flies underfoot and overhead, and in the tumble and play of a snowy romp, we all become children again, carefree and snow wild.
Yes, there is life in winter. And what life!
Even in the winter, when the greenness of summer passes into slumber and the chill and silence settles in, even when the waking months of the growing seasons are long past, there is a life that lurks in wintertime, and not too hidden from our eyes. It is a quiet life, but a rollicking merriment, like peals of distant bells or a silent glint of laughter in smiling eyes. It is seen in the way the spider threads tangle up the slanting sun with the dried heads of bee balm. It is seen in the way the sunlight catches just so on ice crystals on a frozen stream. It is seen in the clear blue of icicles, or the swirling eddies of freshly fallen snow.
The days are short and shorter, but moonlight casts her spell. What is more alive than a winter moon over a snow-gleaming landscape, the frost glinting and sparkling like innumerable stars fallen to earth? On a clear night, only the brightest of the heavenly stars can be seen, but every meadow becomes a new star field under the light of the waking moon. 
Deer and antelope and bison are heedless of the cold, rooting contentedly in the snowy grass, with blankets of snow resting on their backs. Clouds of warmth swirl from the mouths of anything that breathes. Creatures that were scruffy in the spring and summer are now fat and sleek. They have prepared for winter, and they accept it. 
Every sound rings through the crystal-cold air. There are the diminutive footprints and tail prints of mice, scampering over otherwise untouched snow, and careful footprints of deer. Golden grasses sway above the white of the snow. There are the memories of last summer’s wild roses. 
Spring will come again. But for now, winter lives.
Right before our long fall ended and winter began, we had one glorious day of 60 degree weather and sunshine, clear blue skies and only the slightest breeze. The Johnson family and I went out to Falling Rock along Hwy. 44 west of Rapid City to get family pictures. What a beautiful spot! Junipers and pine, expansive views, rock outcroppings, and golden sunlight.
The Johnsons are a special family to me, for a number of reasons. We all go to the same church and share sweet fellowship with our fellow brothers and sisters there on a weekly basis. Dave is my boss, and what a joy it has been to work for a brother in Christ. His wife Teresa is a dear friend of mine and I look up to her very much as my sister in Christ. They have raised a wonderful family, and all six of them have such a love for their Savior.
I love taking portraits of couples who have been married for more than 20 years. What a testimony a strong marriage is to our good God! I have shot a few weddings and young couples, but I really think I enjoy the longer-married couples the best, even if it is just a handful of pictures in the middle of a family photoshoot. There is a unity and belonging there, a beautiful blending of two souls, a true sense of companionship born of time and hardship and joy. 
Siblings. Another one of God’s greatest gifts. They are the first friends we ever have and hopefully are always the friends we hold the closest and keep the longest! Homeschoolers really do have it the best, in this regard. Day in and day out, we share life with our siblings. It isn’t optional, when your siblings are your classmates, your roommates, your playdates, your partners in crime….etc. 
God has gifted the Johnson family in so many ways, individually as well as familially. Not only are they good natured and personable and pleasant, but they have been gifted with skills and talents which they share generously with others. They enjoy and share their musical abilities, their creative talents, their hospitality, their medical skills and training, and literally share their home and and their lives. They’re also quite the handsome family. And wow, the Johnson women have gorgeous eyes. But all of that – their talents, their skills, their hospitality and personalities and giving – really would be nothing, except for the beauty of Christ in them, individually as well as as a family.
How wonderful it is to have a day set aside from work and the normal routine to gather with family and friends to remember our blessings! For Christians in particular, Thanksgiving Day should be poignant and meaningful, in a way that goes beyond the sweet platitude of “an attitude of gratitude.” We must not fail to acknowledge the Person to whom we are giving thanks. We have so many things to thank God for. We thank him for family, for friends, for our church homes. We thank him for freedoms. We thank him for religious liberties that we still are able to enjoy here. We thank him for the blessing of a good job, of financial security, for good weather and good harvest. We give thanks for the sumptuous feast before us on the table, for the familiar faces of family and friends around the table with us. We thank him for health and gifts of prosperity. We thank him for successes. These are all things for which to thank God, by all means.
But there is a problem. We often spend our Thanksgiving cultivating gratitude for the temporal, the ephemeral. There’s nothing wrong with giving thanks for the temporary; after all every good and perfect gift is from above (James 1:17), so indeed, give thanks. But some, many, don’t enjoy many or any of those things that I listed. “What in the world do they have to be thankful for?” we may think in sorrow. Or, “What in the world do I have to be thankful for?” This is wrong thinking. Paul in his second letter to the Corinthian church proclaimed this: Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. (II Corinthians 4:16-18) If we know Christ and have the hope of Heaven, we have everything to be thankful for. Everything, that is, being God himself. For if we are in Christ, isn’t he our everything? And if he isn’t, shouldn’t he be? Circumstances of life may devastate us. Thanksgiving Day may be a day of heartbreak for many. But with an eternal hope, a hope that is realized beyond the grave, beyond pain and sorrow and hardship and trials, how much we have to be thankful for! All of this life is so temporary and so short. All the sorrow (and all the joy!) we experience in this life will be nothing compared with the resurrection joy, the eternal joy, the Heavenly joy of our future home. 
Tomorrow we could be stripped of our family by death. But the command and truth remain: Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever (1 Chronicles 16:34). This sentiment was sung by Asaph and other ministering musicians appointed by King David to bless the Lord before God’s people, and this sentiment is echoed again and again throughout the Psalms. With this as a model, we should thank God, for he is good. Really, nothing else matters, except that God is God, and he is good. The secure job could be taken away: Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever. You or your loved one could receive a diagnosis of cancer or another terrifying illness: Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever. Your small business could fail, cattle prices plummet destructively, crops could be destroyed by hail or drought, your home taken away through fire or flood: Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever. Your spouse could die, your children could turn away from their faith, your wife could miscarry: Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever. My point isn’t to sound a bell of doom and mourning, or to make light of any tragedy. These are events that devastate families on a daily basis. The early church itself faced grief, persecution, loss, death, trials of kinds we in America can only imagine, and many trials we can too easily imagine. And yet they were commanded: Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18). And only can we do this through the hope of what is to come, the hope of purpose beyond what we can see with our eyes. For we are also told, Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted (Matthew 5:4). And in Isaiah: He will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces (Isaiah 25:8).
The James 1 passage continues: Every good and perfect gift is from above….He chose to give us birth through the word of truth…. (James 1:17-18). This is the manifestation of his love toward us, that While we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). We are to thank God for his glorious Gift of Salvation through the redemptive sacrifice of Jesus Christ, God in the Flesh, God Incarnate, the Son of Mary, the Son of God. This is truly the most glorious Gift! God created mankind to glorify himself, and for mankind to enjoy fellowship with God. In Genesis 3, we are told that he walked in the Garden in the cool of the day. He fellowshipped with his creatures Adam and Eve in the lush and plentiful Garden he had created. Sin destroyed this intimate fellowship, but through the life and death of Christ, we are able to again experience fellowship with God on a spiritual level now, and one day we will actually stand before him, and come to live in a world without death or pain! And this gift is a free gift, offered to everyone. 
Thanksgiving in a Biblical sense implies a proper understanding of our place before God, and God’s place above us. We are to replace the old pattern of our sin lives with a proper understanding of our place before God. Paul writes to the church in Ephesus: But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people. Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving (Ephesians 5:3-4). Our lives now are to exhibit this precious fellowship with God through Christ – With the help of the Holy Spirit, we are to weed these things from our lives, not to earn our way to Heaven, but because they are out of place in the lives of those who have been brought into fellowship with God. And that precious fellowship is exhibited in us pouring forth thanksgiving. How simple, yet how difficult. Thanksgiving. 
On this day of Thanksgiving, give thanks for all of the blessings you enjoy – God truly gives lavish gifts, the greatest being the gift of Salvation. If you are mourning rather than rejoicing, if you are struggling, experiencing loss, remember that God is good, and his love endures forever – Take comfort in the hope we have in Christ. Give thanks for the visible blessings, but don’t forget the eternal blessings.
Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 4:6-7
As soon as I heard that there were wild horses up at Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota, I knew I wanted to make a trip up there. It turned out that we could make the trip while our sister Jess was here visiting for a week from Illinois, so we dug out our camping equipment, made hasty plans, and piled everything into the pickup, ready to camp in the South Unit of the Park. 
Half of the pickup bed was filled with bedding, since it was supposed to be in the 30s the night we were up there. It took about five hours to make the drive, due to high winds, and we arrived after dark at the Cottonwood campsite. We set our tent up by the light of the truck headlights, since we failed to bring a working lantern with us; we splinted a broken tent pole with an extra tent stake and duct tape, since we’d managed to let the tent blow down the night before when we were “airing it out.” Of course, it started to sprinkle, which is par for the course on an Adrian camping trip, and we made a tiny fire in the campsite grill, enough to heat up some soup. We finally piled into the tent, and huddled in our blankets to play cards, listening to the wind and rain picking up and wondering if the tent would blow over again. 
It didn’t. After a chilly night, we rolled out of our blankets the next morning, ready to tackle the day. Jess and Sarah whipped up some breakfast while Anna and I packed up our tent, and we all headed out to see the sights of the Park.
The 70,000 acres of Theodore Roosevelt National Park are home to abundant wildlife, including feral horses, buffalo, antelope, and deer, with the Little Missouri River crisscrossing the badlands. Theodore Roosevelt lived out there in the 1880s, and the breathtaking beauty makes one wonder why he ever left. Unlike the South Dakota badlands, which are bare and treeless, the North Dakota badlands are thickly covered with juniper trees and scrub juniper and other coarse foliage. The November landscape was muted, but still colorful with the hues of the autumn grasslands and the brilliant sky. The views were spectacular! We drove the 36-mile scenic loop, stopping at just about every pullout and walking where we could. We wanted to hike, but we had Jess’s dog with us, and dogs aren’t allowed on trails in the park. So be forewarned. 
After probably 10 miles of seeing no wildlife, we started to wonder if we’d leave without ever seeing the horses, but we came around a bend in the road and in a sprawling valley, still faintly green, there were five or six beauties grazing quietly. We only saw one other small bunch, but it was worth it.
History lingers on up there. The ranch house for the Peaceful Valley Ranch is stalwart in the sagebrush, and the various structures surrounding the house seem to have been born of the prairie. Fingerprints of the settlers and ranchers still leave their impression on the landscape, in the subtle way of the Old West. 
We picnicked just south of Medora at Sully Creek State Park, and were able to do some hiking there along the Maah Daah Hey trail with the dog. The trail spans some 100 miles of North Dakota, and we enjoyed a couple of miles of it overlooking the Little Missouri and farms and ranches nestled in the valleys. 
The soil was loose and sandy, and the rocks were so different from the rocks in the Hills. In the sunlight, trails in the Black Hills are dazzling, sparkling with quartz and mica and other minerals. In North Dakota, the soil was sandy and dull, without a glimmer of quartz or mica. We followed the trail in and out of the wind, from sheltered ravine to exposed hilltop. Again, the views were stunning. 
The wilderness of North Dakota is otherworldly, with the pale jutting ridges of the Badlands, the strange forests of juniper, the sandy soil, and the quiet of emptiness, but an emptiness so full, it sings.
Song Dog Journal 