Snow

We were giddy with happiness to receive a foot of snow last Sunday. After a long, long time with absolutely no precipitation, just a few mists in October, and last winter when we had no snow until April, this restored our faith in the weather.

It also occurred to me that snow serves another purpose. It says “STOP.” Not batten-down-the-hatches-and-run-away-because-I’m-about-to-sweep-through-your-town-and-destroy-everything-in-my-wake. Just a gentle stop.

We made it to church on Sunday, but that was all. We cancelled our plans for the evening and hunkered down. There were idyllic things going on– Steve in his furniture shop with the woodstove going, me making cookies in the kitchen. It snowed all day and into the night.

unplowed Episcopal House of Prayer

By the time we went to bed, there was already the announcement scrolling on the t.v. screen of a “late start” on Monday. Isn’t that the kindest thing– a Monday where work doesn’t start until 10 a.m.? When I got to work, the roads still slick and snowy, the university had not plowed out our retreat center yet. I had “book business” at the post office, so did my errands and returned. Even at 10:30 a.m., no signs of a snow plow, so I went home and worked from there.

The sky was a gorgeous blue and the snow a brilliant white and thick on the trees. I went for a snowshoe and trudged through places I can’t walk any other time of year– over wetlands, through cattail marshes, frozen beneath the snow. I followed animal tracks until they went under the low canopy of a pine tree or into a thicket. I got home and fell into the chair, spent from the effort and the beauty. The sun went down fast, like it does this time of year: long shadows, pink sky, then dark.

It was the gentlest, most beautiful little stop.