Let it Snow

I'm pretty excited. It's looking like it'll snow tonight and tomorrow.

I love the snow. I love watching it fall, as individual flakes flutter to the ground. I love watching it stick, and accumulate in a creamy, white meringue on the ground. I love the tranquility that a snowfall brings, how it muzzles much of the non-natural world around us, leaving nature to sing her song. I love how it looks, a crisply fresh topping that masks much of what is otherwise unsightly. I love how thankful it makes you feel to have a warm home and a loving family (and a glass of good wine).

I don't like to shovel it. Just to get that straight. My romanticism does not border on losing my lucidity.

I also like what snow brings, and by that I mean sledding. No matter the danger (see post in December), I really, really like taking the boys sledding. I love careening down the hill, eyes watering, the wind biting at my face, as I plummet downward, desperately trying to steer us away from trees, signposts, curbs, kids and other hazards. It's an easily acquired rush of adrenaline, a very cheap thrill.

We've had just one good snowfall this winter, around Christmas, and with the state, and much of the Midwest in a drought, as January neared an end, we wondered whether there'd be another. And the weather – not to dwell too much on the weather (Hello, do you believe in climate change, you remaining doubters?) – has been like a yo yo. Today, for instance, the temperature climbed above 60º – 60 degrees – before beginning a descent so rapid that it would have made a parachutist dizzy. By tonight, we will be below freezing, and what has been rain will turn to snow and continue as such for much of the day tomorrow. In all, the weather watchers – those glorious folks who can be wrong half the time yet enjoy complete job security – say we'll get between 5 and 7 inches.

By tomorrow night, we'll drop to 3º. So, in a span of about 36 hours, we'll watch the air temperature see-saw by about 60 degrees. Wow.

No wonder I've seen geese flying in different directions the past couple of days. They must be as confused as a hiker with a broken compass.

Getting beyond yet another example of wild weather and the growing body of evidence of our unrelenting upending of the world's climate, I'm just looking forward to the snow. Heck, I may be even stay up late enough to greet the first flakes as they descend from the sky.

Bring 'em on!

(I'll worry about shoveling later.)