Part 8 - Snow

It has finally started snowing here. And now it won’t stop. There are about 5 or 6 inches of it on the ground. It has snowed every day since Saturday, just a little bit each day. It’s now Tuesday. And the forecast calls for snow through the weekend.

It’s a white white white world! White sky, white fields, white mountains, and only a few fence posts and tall grasses to break it up.

On my way to work this morning, I saw a horse standing absolutely still next to a frozen tree (looking cold, miserable, almost afraid to move). That was a black and white world. After driving for 7 or 8 miles, I approached a traffic light and saw the little spot of green as the first color of the day, and something of a shock after all that white.

So I thought I’d post a few pictures, which I took at the beginning of this episode of snow, as well as a couple of random thoughts and questions about snow. I hope this will help you warmer climate folks feel Christmas-y (or, more likely, lucky to be warm).



There’s a minor avalanche on my metal roof. Avalanches are real here, not just something in the cartoons or movies that play with the imaginations of children, who are so intrigued by natural dangers. There is an avalanche hotline here. People take helicopters into the back country to ski, which is part of the reason we need the hot line. As soon as it started snowing, I saw snowmobiles on trailers behind SUVs and pickups headed for the canyons, too.

The ski resorts drop explosives into the snow where they think there’s a danger of avalanche, so that it happens before the skiers get there. The snow is beautiful AND dangerous. A woman died in an avalanche at the Snowbird ski resort on Sunday. Her sister was quoted as saying, “We are a skiing family and we’ll still be a skiing family.” They said that the woman who died was “an extremist.” But I don’t know. Is it extreme to hike 20 minutes with your skis in order to see the snow in the real wilderness? That doesn't seem extreme to me.

I’ve been singing with a little community Christmas choir. One of the songs we’re singing is Still, Still, Still (of German origin, something like a lullaby if you don't know it). It says, “You can hear the falling snow.” Have you ever heard the falling snow? I haven't. I guess you hear the snow just because of what you don’t hear. So is that hearing or not hearing?

I'm reminded of one of the first short stories that ever caught my attention – Silent Snow, Secret Snow, by Conrad Aiken. Have you read it? It was in the standard English curriculum when I was in junior high school, and I've seen it in more recently published readers. The critics say the story is about a kid’s descent into schizophrenia. He imagines that snow is getting deeper and deeper when he wakes up and hears the footsteps of the postman getting increasingly muffled each day. I don't know about the schizophrenia thing. I bet there’s not a kid alive (in northern climates, anyway) who hasn’t spent time imagining that it has snowed, as s/he wakes up. I’ve gotten up in the middle of the night as a grownup and gone to window and been fooled by a white street light or the moon shining down on pavement, making it look like it has snowed. I think the Aiken story tries to capture a kid’s interior world, and the natural isolation of being a child. But all this may not mean much to you if you haven't read the story. It's fun to think about kids waking up to new snow, though. Kids and snow go together. Snow still makes me feel like a kid.

"Snow” is a perfect word, isn't it? Soft and slippery and hushed … and it happens right NOW. Under normal circumstances, it might be gone tomorrow. But they say I won’t see the ground here until April.



I spotted snow falling at night against the backdrop of the log section of my cabin and thought it was incredibly beautiful. I’m not sure why. Was it an opening scene from a nice movie I can’t quite remember? Maybe it’s just the contrast of light, random flakes moving against large, solid, dark logs. I think snow on the wood pile is pretty too. But I might change my mind about that when I try to light a fire.

So the snow has fallen, and is falling, and we’re all getting ready for Christmas, and we'll probably hear the familiar story of something coming down from heaven, a transformed world, softness, animals, straw, and difficult journeys. It comes at just the right time.





I hope you get to see or hear something wonderful this Christmas.