Easter Sunday

Como Park

Easter Sunday, and it snowed nearly six inches in Saint Paul.

Mid-April, but it looked more like bleak December.

By late afternoon, I’d been stuck in the house way too long and needed an outing.

I walked to Como Park, not far from my home.

The weather was grim, the low, slate clouds still spitting snow as small and hard as grains of salt.

I didn’t go expecting blossoms and sunshine.

What I discovered were moments of extraordinary revelation completely unanticipated.

A pond where a frog statue sat in clear, cold water, dressed in an ermine coat.

A maple tree whose young buds had become tiny snowballs.

The distant roar of big cats in the Como Zoo, a rumbling from the jungle delightfully incongruous in that polar landscape.

My footprints the only human sign in a deserted park that was, for a little while, all my own.

If you go out looking just for the beauty you hope to find, life will be full of disappointment.

If you go with no expectation, then everything is an unexpected gift.