Digging out

According to J’s official backyard measurement, we got 12 inches of snow in Newton this weekend, starting late on Saturday night and continuing throughout the day on Sunday. Contrary to the media hype (and local supermarket panics) over this presumably apocalyptic storm, life did not screech to a halt in New England: it never does. A fresh foot of snow is Just Another Winter Storm, so even on Sunday morning as the snow still fell, folks in the suburbs were out with shovels and snowblowers, digging out as usual.

J and I had tickets for an afternoon women’s basketball game at Boston College, so since the game wasn’t canceled, we transported ourselves to the game the way we usually do: we walked. Yesterday wasn’t the first time we’ve made the seven-mile round-trip trek to BC in a snowstorm: the exertion of walking keeps you warm, and although some stretches of sidewalk weren’t plowed or shoveled, drivers were careful to leave room for the two intrepid pedestrians walking the plowed edge of Beacon Street.

The exceptional thing about our walk to and from BC is that it isn’t exceptional. On the way to and from BC, we met a handful of other walkers, along with folks out shoveling driveways and folks stopped for hot chocolate before or after sledding. At the game itself, one fellow working the concession stand said he’d walked two miles through the snowstorm to get to work. Again, life in New England doesn’t screech to a halt because we got a foot of snow; instead, we quickly get to the business of digging out, and life otherwise goes on as usual.

Because we spent Sunday afternoon walking to and from that women’s basketball game, J spent this morning doing the snow-removal he usually would have done yesterday, snow-blowing the driveway, sidewalks, and walkways as well as raking the roof of excess snow. It’s about three hours of work he has to do whenever it snows, so it’s just as well to get 12 inches in one big storm rather than a little bit of snow here and a little bit of snow there.

As for me, I’m spending today with my paper-piles, with final grades for both Keene State and SNHU Online being due tomorrow. Whether you’re blowing through snowdrifts or battling paper-piles, it’s a long job of digging out all the same.

 

Inner fires

It’s been brutally cold today and yesterday, with windchill temperatures in the teens and single-digits. Reggie doesn’t seem to mind the cold as long as the pavement beneath his paws isn’t too icy, so we walk even in frigid temperatures, with Reggie tugging at his leash and me wrapped in layers of down and fleece.

I’m always amazed to see wild things active and apparently undeterred by severe winter weather, as if cold doesn’t penetrate fur and feathers. Yesterday, the squirrels seemed oblivious to the cold, and this morning, a half dozen Cedar waxwings were foraging in a cluster of fruit-laden crab-apple trees, consuming fuel for their inner fires.

On cold days, it still feels good to walk, at least once you burn off your initial inertia. If you dress well, you almost don’t mind the chill, knowing full well you have a warm apartment and hot beverages to return to. Fingers inside gloves warm quickly if you swing your arms, and a long down coat will keep even your legs warm if you walk briskly. The only thing that really hurts on a frigid morning dog-walk is your face, but even that isn’t insurmountable: I wear a scarf on extremely cold days, and I haven’t lost my nose, cheeks, or watering eyes to frostbite yet.

Throughout the day today as I’ve sat grading papers at my kitchen table, I’ve repeated a silent prayer of gratitude each time I’ve heard the furnace start up in the basement below me: the sound of my apartment fueling its own inner fire.

 

Winter

Yesterday afternoon, I had a quintessential Winter Moment as I rearranged the snow shovel and snowshoes in the back of my Subaru in order to make room for J’s snow-blower, which I retrieved after its annual tuneup. And that’s not even mentioning the bag of emergency hats, scarves, gloves, and hand-warmers I carry in my car during the winter, or the stash of emergency snacks I keep in my car in case I ever get stranded on some snowy road between New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Now that winter’s arrived in New England, you really can’t be too prepared.

Airing now in Massachusetts, there’s a TV ad for a local insurance company that contrasts the romantic idea of “winter” with the actual realities of the season. “An insurance company in California thinks this is what a New England winter is like,” the announcer intones as Santa’s sleigh is shown gently floating over a quaintly snowy landscape. “We know,” the narrator continues, “that winter in New England looks like this,” and what follows is video montage showing folks shoveling insurmountable snowdrifts, folks scraping inches of ice from frozen windshields, a bumper-to-bumper traffic jam in a blinding snowstorm, and a car skidded off the road into a ditch. J and I chuckle whenever we see this commercial. Yep, that’s about right.

Last weekend’s first snow was particularly picturesque, but know that’s only part of the picture. Winter is a two-faced season, and in its worst moods it’s essentially unbloggable. Words and pictures can’t capture what it’s like to walk the dog when temperatures are in the teens and it’s windy, and a blog-post can’t describe what it feels like to skitter across icy sidewalks or clamber through ankle-twisting snow heaps. I can try to describe the dirty ugliness of old snow that’s grown gray with road-exhaust or the eyesore caused by a season’s worth of road salt bleaching roads and cars a similar shade of blah. I can describe these things, and I can post an occasional picture, but ultimately you have to live through it to really understand it.

The previous three pictures show the pretty side of winter, when the snow is fresh and pristine and our souls haven’t gotten sick of it yet. A more accurate image of winter, though, is the following photo from my apartment in Keene, where at least one plow-guy apparently thinks we’re going to have an extremely snowy winter, making it necessary to leave an entire yard’s worth of space now for all the plowed snowbanks in the months to come.

This is my contribution for yesterday’s Photo Friday theme, Winter. My landlord will probably have a heart attack when he sees, in person, that final scene of my plowed yard, especially since last year the house next door plowed their accumulated snow banks well into my backyard. During this season of snow, snow, SNOW, plow-guys eventually run out of places to shove it all.

 

Snow day

You’ve seen this picture before, but it perfectly captures what Reggie looked like after this morning’s snowy dog-walk. In Newton, J says they got only a few inches of slush followed by rain, but here in Keene, we got (I’m guessing) about a half foot of snow in a storm that started overnight and continued throughout the morning with tiny, spitting flakes that seemed more like sleet than snow.

Classes were canceled at Keene State today, but Wednesday is my at-home grading day, so today’s snow-day didn’t affect me. Instead of getting the day off, I’m still snowed under a pile of fluffy white papers and digging out from under an encroaching glacier of digital to-dos. It’s the last week of classes at Keene State, so it’s easy to feel snowed in with work no matter what the weather.

If I’m stuck at home reading papers, it doesn’t much matter what it’s like outside, since I won’t be seeing the light of day much. Instead, I’m relying on hot chocolate and stamina to get me through the latest paper-pile, which I’ll hand back tomorrow, just in time to pick up another pile or two before next week’s final blizzard of exams and end-term portfolios. In other words, I won’t be going much of anywhere anytime soon.

 

Granted

I’d asked for snow, and my wish was granted. It snowed in Boston over the weekend, the cold drizzle J and I walked through on our way to see the Bruins on Saturday night changing into wet snow by the time the game was over. It was a magical moment when we emerged from the arena and stepped into a whitening world where snowflakes were falling like feathers.

It was a slippery, slushy snow: I wouldn’t have wanted to drive home in it. But we didn’t have to drive on Saturday night; we just had to walk to the T, and I’d worn my new winter hiking boots, which are warm, waterproof, and heavy enough to provide good traction.

By Sunday morning, we had the best of all worlds: bright sun, blue sky, and the novelty of fresh snow. Saturday night’s snow was dense and wet, so it clung to trees, creating the lovely look of a winter wonderland with every branch and twig outlined in white. Somehow, almost miraculously, this wet snow melted overnight from streets, driveways, and black-topped sidewalks, leaving the Sunday morning delight of crystal-bright whiteness with no real need for snow shovel or snow-blower: a winter wish granted.

Click here for a photo-set from Sunday’s winter wonderland. Enjoy!

 

December drab

It’s a gray day that feels like snow: a gray day that almost needs snow. We’ve fallen hard, it seems, into December drab, that season of bleary gray transition that needs the mitigation of snow to brighten it.

There’s a reason why folks long for the cheer of a white Christmas. In addition to the nostalgia and romance inspired by countless songs and greeting-card landscapes, a white Christmas brings a touch of brightness to a world largely lacking color and light. After the leaf peepers and the glowing, multicolored objects of their peeping have gone, what remains are gray days when the sun is noticeably on its way toward setting by mid-afternoon. Snow isn’t simply pretty; it’s like a reflective safety vest the earth dons on her darkest days so we can still see her–and still find light for our souls–after the sun has sunk. In a season starved for light, snow helps reflect and thus preserve every last ray, an essential kind of recycling.

Reggie is hunkered down, sleeping deeply; he knows the proper response to darkening days is hibernation, a diligent curling into oneself to rekindle every last spark of inner warmth. We humans, on the other hand, eschew hibernation, turning busy as the sun stoops in seasonal decline and rushing to buy presents and prepare for holiday celebrations as if merely moving will be enough to stave off sluggishness.

Yesterday at the grocery store, I saw a terribly ill-conceived ad that offered shoppers the promise of “Your holiday list for less”…except the design and font made it look at first glance like it said “Your holiday listless.” During a season when listlessness threatens to dominate, this ad unwittingly communicates the entirely wrong message. What we need on gray days isn’t more listlessness; what we need during the depths of December drab is the verve of holiday merriment and energizing inspiration of seasonal scents–pine sap and cinnamon, hot chocolate and nutmeg–to stir us from our stupor and drag us from the toasty cocoon of quasi-hibernation.

What we need during the depths of December drab, I hate to say, is the sight of snow to brighten our palette.

I took these photos yesterday, when it was sunny. The first photo illustrates how unseasonably mild it’s been: warm enough for houseflies to bask on fallen leaves. Today, it’s cold and rainy…with a forecast of snow.

 

Not yet

It’s been a gray day, as was yesterday afternoon. The mail carrier whom Reggie and I often see on our morning walk said it feels like snow, and she’s exactly right: the clouds and even air have felt heavy all day, as if the very weight of the atmosphere will out of necessity crystallize and fall in the form of snowflakes.

Someday soon, perhaps, but not yet. This afternoon when I went to the grocery store, it was drizzly and cold, but still well above freezing: chilblain weather. Now that most (but not all) of the leaves have fallen–now that most (but not all) of the fallen leaves have been raked, blown, and bagged–we’re settling into the monochrome monotony of Stick Season. Sometime in the next few weeks, after we’ve grown tired of the muted grays and browns of late autumn, we’ll gladly welcome a dusting of snow to brighten things up a bit. Just not yet.

 

Just add water

Saturday was rainy, so I spent a good part of my Sunday morning taking pictures of raindrops.

Raindrops are difficult to photograph with a point-and-shoot camera, as the shiny reflective surfaces that make drops of water so interesting to look at often stymie a digicam’s auto-focus. This is part of the reason, I think, I like to take pictures of raindrops: I appreciate a good challenge.

I also like the way that simply adding water to something makes it look different and even strange, as if this most common of substances is actually a kind of elixir, transforming yesterday’s plain old leaves into this morning’s bejeweled beauties. It’s good every now and again to look at the same old world through different eyes, and if you can’t find new eyes, the distorting lens of an ordinary raindrop will serve a similar purpose.

This morning was sunny and clear, so yesterday’s raindrops have long since evaporated, leaving nothing to commemorate this weekend’s rain except Monday morning mushrooms.

 

Late fall

Yesterday was gray and brisk; today is bright and blue. It feels like late fall–fleece weather–with most of the leaves having fallen except for the copper-toned tenacity of beech and oak.

It’s an entirely different palette now than it was the last time I took a bunch of photos along the railtrail, with brown and bronze replacing last month’s red and gold. Now most everything is dry and earth-toned, with the exception of bright red berries–honeysuckle and crab-apple–that stand out with an almost artificial garishness.

They’ve cleared at least one of the lots down the street from my house, one that’s been empty since I moved to Keene some six years ago. Eventually even the long-empty spots fill in, houses creeping into every available corner like dusty, wind-blown leaves: a constant reminder of change.

 

So much for snow…

This is what last night’s soggy snow looked like this morning: melted and awash.

It’s not unusual for New Hampshire to get its first snowfall in October–one year, we had a major snowstorm the first weekend of the month–but in Boston, October snows are rare. So after having enjoyed a dry New England Revolution soccer game–our last of the season–in Foxboro, MA on Saturday night, it was downright surreal for J and me to watch Sunday’s snowy Patriots game on TV at home with friends. There on the screen was the same stadium we’d sat in less than 24 hours before…but the dry field the Revs had enjoyed on Saturday night had been replaced by a slushy, snow-covered surface for the Pats on Sunday.

Saturday’s Revs game was a scoreless tie, and Sunday’s Pats game was a 59-0 rout. Win, lose, or tie, it all ultimately comes out in the wash, just like the morning-after melt-water from the season’s first snow.

Click here for a photo set from Saturday night’s New England Revolution game: the last home game of the 2009 regular season. Enjoy!