Snow Flurries, Shelter Bay
©Kesler Woodward 2006
6 1/4" x 9 1/2"
Watercolor
It snowed here in La Conner the day before yesterday. After almost thirty years in Alaska, twenty-five of them in Fairbanks, I will admit that I began to grow tired of the cold, but I never once, in all my years there, failed to be excited by falling snow, or ever wished it would stop once it started. I have missed it here on the Pacific Northwest coast, and have looked longingly at the mountains when fresh snowfalls crept down their banks toward sea level. So when the air was filled unexpectedly with flurries on Monday morning, I stood at the window for a long time and watched in fascination and delight. When I got to the studio, I immediately knew I had to do a little piece about falling snow. This view, from our friend and business partner Len Braarud's home, is of the entrance to the Swinomish Channel which separates Fidalgo Island from the mainland, seen through a foreground of floating, swirling, all-too-ephemeral snow.