We have the honor this year of hosting the daughter of one of our very best friends in China (where my wife and I lived and came together), and whom we haven't seen in ten years. She just started graduate work here in the US and we flew her to our home for the holiday. Through her eyes we get to see our own world anew.
Being from urban industrial south China, she has never seen mountains, stars (much less the Milky Way), snow (and we woke to 24" of fresh powder yesterday), deer, etc... She is...mesmerized. Take the stunning wondrous world Hollywood created in the movie "Avatar" and that is where she is right now.
We've gone sledding, snowshoeing, ice skating, and hiked into the mountains to cut a Christmas tree, and decorated it by a log fire with homemade ornaments made from collected feathers, seeds, acorns, spruce cones, milkweed down, as well as memorable flies, lures, arrows, and rifle casings from the year. She said when she was very young, her class sent Christmas cards as part of their English learning, and the cards they had showed a log cabin with deep snow on the roof and an orange glow in the window. She is delighted in knowing where such an image comes from.
She takes carefully composed photos of EVERY frosted grass stem, studies snowflakes as they settle on her borrowed parka, gasps at how the snow sparkles under starlight, and marvels at the absolute silence. The natural world has opened up before her, and will carry on to those she will know in the future. Already she is talking of coming back with a fellow grad student in the summer for a camping trip in the high country -something Chinese women are not known to do. We feel especially honored and blessed this year. She makes us that much more appreciative of what we have.
Yes, Happy Holidays to all. Appreciate them, and all we have in the year to come. We only get so many of them.