Snowed-in again. I’d like to say I’m used to it. I’m not. I won’t get used to it. The winter can be beautiful. More often it’s harshly inconvenient.
Transplants to the south say they miss the variety of the seasons.
Northerners miss the summer.
It’s hard to wax romantic about icy roads, frozen pipes, downed powerlines, and roofs collapsed by layers
of accumulated snow.
The south has tornadoes and floods, but they
don’t last all season. Winter’s troubles are relentless.
With infrequent exceptions they last until spring. Sometimes longer.
Robert frost’s poem, Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening, has misled many readers into thinking it’s an ode to the quiet charm of softly falling snow. Actually, Frost is using snow as a metaphor for death.
An apt metaphor, echoed by, “In the dead
of winter”, and other such expressions.
Ancients around the northern climes have aways thought of winter as “the time of dying”. Their varied winter solstice celebrations were all intended to hasten
the spring.
Modern innocents hope for snow on Christmas.
The ancients had better sense than to hope for snow.
I woke this morning to find my deck covered with three feet of snow.
My usual morning pleasure is to put out seeds for the birdies. Now I will have to slog across sixteen feet of slippery snow to get to the feeding station. I’m old. I can’t afford to fall. I fed the birds anyway - with difficulty.
The snow might last for many days. I finally thought of a solution. I put a 2’x3’ scrap of plywood right outside the door to the deck. The birds will likely be confused by this new feeding station. I was sure they’d figure it out.
They did.
Just one more winter annoyance.
I’m not always crabby about winter. I once had
a pleasant encounter with snow.
It was the first snow of the year, about a week before Christmas. I was driving home from work. A sleepy snow of big soft flakes was falling. It was the kind of snow that always reminds me of buffalo. I once saw a picture of buffalo obscured by just such dense snow. Ever since,
I think of that sort of snow as buffalo snow.
I turned off the interstate onto the parkway - and into an enchanted winter wonderland. leaf-baren trees, evergreens and road alike, were draped in mystical whiteness. Crystalline sparkles flitted like winter-fairies casting magic with their snow-wands. The night was unearthly, still and peaceful. I slowed the car to a crawl to make the spell last longer.
Words floated through my head.
When I got home I turned the words into verses:
Tonight the snow is falling,
For the very first time this year,
Covering all the autumn brown,
a winter wonderland,
There’s nothing whiter than,
The first snow of the year.
The world is still, and all is silent,
There’s a peace all over the land,
And the gently falling snow,
Covers all this world of woe,
There’s nothing whiter than,
The first snow of the year.
Christmas time, is almost here,
‘tis the holiest season of the year,
When the Prince of Peace was born,
All this world was turned around,
And his love, came falling down.
Later, I used the verses to make a song. I titled it, First Snow. After finishing the melody I arranged it into: verse, verse, chorus, instrumental of verse, repeat of chorus, repeat of first verse – and added a coda.
I used the last verse - “Christmas time” as the chorus.
The coda was an instrumental solo of the first line of Jingle Bells: “Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way” - played quietly, as legato single notes, with the final note lingering.
Not the least bit cranky.
But wait!
The news is forecasting thirty to forty mph winds, six to eight inches of more snow, along with freezing temperatures that will last well past the end of the month. That would be on top of the three feet of snow still in the driveway. I hope my supplies will last.
I’m willing to think more kindly of winter.
I wish the winter would do the same for me.
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