It's that time of year again. The first snowfall. Reactions are always mixed. It's truly quite the controversy when that snow hits the ground. Some people start to run around and twirl as the flakes dance around and others grumpily tighten their scarves around their neck and rush back to the warmth of the indoors. Whatever you feel, there is a true beauty to being allowed to experience all four seasons.

There is an excitement to the change I've felt since I was a little girl. I always loved the way it made me feel as I could smell the air as it shifted, I always loved to watch the trees alter and the colors vary. I always felt deeply privileged to have grown up around a white Christmas, an orange and yellow Halloween and a green and purple Easter. I get the complaints around me as the air grows cold or humid, as the wind hits your face with a chilly bite or the sun beats down on a cloudless day, but I also think people forget to stop and see the beauty and diversity it brings. I think that people forget that where they are has beautiful uniqueness and some of us are blessed in different ways with different natural phenomena.

I didn't realize how diverse and exotic where I lived was and how blessed I was until I lived on an indigenous reservation. I was talking with my host mothers one day as we looked through a photography book from Colorado. It showed the many different aspects of Colorado's natural beauty. My host mother, Juanita, looked at me and said, "You are so lucky to live where the colors change and you have so many all we have is green and it is boring." I was struck for a moment. How could she say that? I took many walks into the jungle from my home there and I was awestruck at leaves bigger than my head and tree trunks with vines growing up them. That's not to mention the butterflies with their brilliant blues and reads fluttering around as I explored what seemed only to be the thing of fantasies to me as a child. I realized that I had taken my own beauty for granted, that what I saw as boring and mundane,was the thing others' envied, and I had not taken the time to appreciate it.

So, to bring it all back, I enjoy the four seasons, because there are not too many places that have it quite as intensely as here in Western New York. There are not too many places where I can eat blackberries and pick daffodils and watch red and orange leaves spin to the ground. I learned to be grateful for how amazing my life is and how incredible my resources are and yes, I don't mind when the seasons change because it's the gift I've been given to experience.