The winter winds blow silently across the plains carving patterns in the snow. The whipperwill whippers in the chill of winters cold grip. The trees are bare and skeletal; branches reaching to the sky. The icicles grow slowly as dew drips and freezes on their icy surface. The snow hare ventures from its burrow, blending into the cold silent white world. In the stillness nothing happens and time seems to stop. The stillness is broken by an interloper crossing the still meadow. The interloper is a deer, a tall elegant example of the breed. On strong legs she stands, sniffing the air. She is alert and ready even though danger is far from her. An eternity passes as this still life is frozen and then with the snap of a twig, is shattered like a mirror. The flakes of snow, shaken from the trees by the deer's sudden flight, fall to the ground like the sparkling fragments of a broken mirror. Soon the snow flakes settle invisibly into the snowy carpet. The clearing is quiet and still yet again with only the chilled breath of the wind to change it and disrupt its perfection. Yet with each little change comes another kind of perfection and no matter how it changes, it remains perfect. Such is the nature of a frozen clearing in the woods.