A Winter Walk

...The wonderful purity of nature at this season is a most pleasing fact. Every decayed stump and moss-grown stone and rail, and the dead leaves of autumn, are concealed by a clean napkin of snow. In the bare fields and tinkling woods, see what virtue survives. In the coldest and bleakest places, the warmest charities still maintain a foothold. A cold and searching wind drives away all contagion, and nothing can withstand it but what has virtue in it, and accordingly, whatever we meet with in cold and bleak places, as the tops of mountains, we respect for a sort of sturdy innocence, a Puritan toughness. All things beside seem to be called in for shelter, and what stays out must be part of the original frame of the universe, and of such valor as God himself. It is invigorating to breathe the cleansed air. Its greater fitness and purity are visible to the eye, and we would fain stay out long and late, and the gales may sigh though us, too, as through the leafless trees, and fit us for the winter, as if we hoped so to borrow some pure and steadfast virtue, which will stead us in all seasons... 

~ A Winter Walk, Henry David Thoreau