Snow Changes Everything

The landscape becomes less harsh and more welcoming. At the same time it becomes more alien. Everything familiar is buried under snow: the cabin decks, the path to the water pump, the septic system, the yard full of pine cones, the creek, the road. It all blends into a blanket of white.

Before the snowstorm, the landscape was what I call ugly winter: the snow from two weeks ago had melted and frozen, creating dirty lumps. Where the snow was absent, the ground was brown, the grasses beaten down by wind, rain and snow.

But when I arrived at the cabin last week, snow was falling on the already 2-3 feet of snow we got the previous week. All that snow makes my daily chores more difficult and complicated. I have to create paths to the water pump and to the shed to get more firewood. Driving is tricky, because the road is a narrow ribbon through 3-foot piles of snow, so straying inches from that path could mean getting stuck. Instead of walking across the front yard to my neighbor’s, I have to walk out the driveway and onto the road.

But the rewards are worth the extra labor. I took my cross-country skis to nearby Wild Basin on the day it was snowing hard, and the new stuff made the old snow even softer, more pliable. Every push forward provided a small bounce, a small leap upward, so I felt unbounded, free from life’s mundane chores. Coming back down I felt I was floating, skimming the top of the snow. The whole landscape felt softer. Rough and sharp boulders wore soft caps of snow, and the creek was muffled.

The next morning the sun came out, and the light was almost blinding on the unbroken blanket of snow. When I went for a walk later on the plowed road, my senses felt sharp, as if I were seeing things more clearly.   

Meanwhile, after one of the driest Decembers on record, the trees are sucking up all this new moisture. For the moment, I won’t have to worry that this forest of ponderosas, spruces and aspen will start to die off. With all this snow, for the time being, I won’t worry about wildfires.  

For a short amount of time, the world is renewed again. I need to appreciate that.

Comments

[shoneysien]

Thank you again for sharing your journey with us. I love the photos and think your description of 'ugly winter' is right on...those frozen dirty lumps take me back to the worst of my childhood winters--but then you remind me of how much I adore the brilliant light on newly fallen snow. You do it all!

[Julene Bair]

Love the images, both literary and visual! I could feel the bounce of skiing on new snow. We can't count on snow anymore, as we once did. It was an inevitability then. Now we pray for it. But your images make me revel in the beauty, however undependable snow has become.