Winter
IT MAY VERY WELL be impossible not to enjoy a holiday spent with someone who still calls it "turkey-lurkey." Even though it means coming home in 4wd going 40mph. I live 99 miles from my parents' front door, and I'd drive it round-trip every day if gas wasn't so expensive. Honestly, can you believe I paid $1.77 a gallon today? What's that? Yours is $2.00? Oh, I'm sorry.
It's also hard not to enjoy the first day after the first heavy snow, no matter how inconvenient to your travel plans, because it's still bright white and soft as powdered-sugar, heaped on street corners like whipped cream. Also the top layer tends to harden about an inch down as it melts and freezes, melts and freezes, so you can carve out perfect square tablets with your index finger and pretend you're Moses coming down the mountain path with five Commandments under each arm. And what's underneath is a delightful crystalline glitter, dry as sand, so it's impossible for your brother-in-law to make a snowball to throw at your head. Instead, he discovers he can carve an impressively functional round frizbee from the crusty top layer and send it spinning at you. It shatters on your coat, which leaves all three dogs with nothing to fetch when they reach you where you've knelt knee-deep in snow in your jeans, laughing to the point of weakness, so the dogs chomp at the remnants of your Holy replicas instead.
It was just above zero this morning, and walking to work I could almost pretend I only dreamt summer, just July: the warmth and color and ease of it. It snowed a bit into June and once the end of August, and a few times in September and October, and I never lost the rhythm of winter, of snow: the punch-grind-squeak of walking in it; the scoop-lift-twist-toss of shoveling it; the constant drip when it melts, the soundless static hiss when it falls straight down.
For those who have never lived in snow, I must say the novelty wears off pretty damn quick. You can only enjoy so much hot chocolate before it starts to taste like motor oil, and you'll run out of tolerable soup-and-sandwich combinations really fast, too. Wool, though cleverly marketed, is scratchy no matter how it's prepared, and if you like fancy, delicate footwear, this is not the place for you. No Birkenstocks, no Jimmy Choos- better get some paks or Mason boots; you're going to need them. Forget the manicure and buy some good lined gloves, preferably a pair made from the flesh of something, because you'll be scraping the ice off every window of your car for the next three months at least. And don't bother much with your hair in the morning, aside from drying it so thoroughly you can't feel your scalp; your hat or scarf or both are going to crush it anyhow. In a way it depresses me that while here, I'll spend 50% of my life 99% covered. It's like I'm wearing a weather-induced burqa.
But really, you've never seen the sun rise until you've seen it do so below zero, seen liquid gold trickle through a smoky valley full of trees so thick with frost they look like blown glass etched to look real, bare twigs and branches and trunks all glowing. Blinding rainbow geysers called 'sun dogs' stand solidly up on either side of the sun, and streets turn to shredded mirrors where ruts in the snow are packed and smoothed to runners of ice. I'm sure I can't describe it decently, so I'll just hope that someday, preferably before you die of smog-inhalation, you conquer your fear of freezing to death and spend a winter someplace cold.
It's also hard not to enjoy the first day after the first heavy snow, no matter how inconvenient to your travel plans, because it's still bright white and soft as powdered-sugar, heaped on street corners like whipped cream. Also the top layer tends to harden about an inch down as it melts and freezes, melts and freezes, so you can carve out perfect square tablets with your index finger and pretend you're Moses coming down the mountain path with five Commandments under each arm. And what's underneath is a delightful crystalline glitter, dry as sand, so it's impossible for your brother-in-law to make a snowball to throw at your head. Instead, he discovers he can carve an impressively functional round frizbee from the crusty top layer and send it spinning at you. It shatters on your coat, which leaves all three dogs with nothing to fetch when they reach you where you've knelt knee-deep in snow in your jeans, laughing to the point of weakness, so the dogs chomp at the remnants of your Holy replicas instead.
It was just above zero this morning, and walking to work I could almost pretend I only dreamt summer, just July: the warmth and color and ease of it. It snowed a bit into June and once the end of August, and a few times in September and October, and I never lost the rhythm of winter, of snow: the punch-grind-squeak of walking in it; the scoop-lift-twist-toss of shoveling it; the constant drip when it melts, the soundless static hiss when it falls straight down.
For those who have never lived in snow, I must say the novelty wears off pretty damn quick. You can only enjoy so much hot chocolate before it starts to taste like motor oil, and you'll run out of tolerable soup-and-sandwich combinations really fast, too. Wool, though cleverly marketed, is scratchy no matter how it's prepared, and if you like fancy, delicate footwear, this is not the place for you. No Birkenstocks, no Jimmy Choos- better get some paks or Mason boots; you're going to need them. Forget the manicure and buy some good lined gloves, preferably a pair made from the flesh of something, because you'll be scraping the ice off every window of your car for the next three months at least. And don't bother much with your hair in the morning, aside from drying it so thoroughly you can't feel your scalp; your hat or scarf or both are going to crush it anyhow. In a way it depresses me that while here, I'll spend 50% of my life 99% covered. It's like I'm wearing a weather-induced burqa.
But really, you've never seen the sun rise until you've seen it do so below zero, seen liquid gold trickle through a smoky valley full of trees so thick with frost they look like blown glass etched to look real, bare twigs and branches and trunks all glowing. Blinding rainbow geysers called 'sun dogs' stand solidly up on either side of the sun, and streets turn to shredded mirrors where ruts in the snow are packed and smoothed to runners of ice. I'm sure I can't describe it decently, so I'll just hope that someday, preferably before you die of smog-inhalation, you conquer your fear of freezing to death and spend a winter someplace cold.
posted by A at
9:13 PM
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