Snow, wonderful snow!

Wow, it's snowing! I love snow. I love it when it's snowing hard, and I love it when it's just coming down as the faintest hint of flakes. There's something magical and free about little motes of pure whiteness falling from the sky.

I was downtown today, and the snow was falling, and the wind was blowing -- not so you'd call it a storm, but enough that people were pulling their collars up, hunching their shoulders, and tilting their faces away from the weather. Not me, though -- when it snows, I feel so good, it makes me feel warmer. If you'd seen me, I'd've been the person standing on the corner, chin up, eyes bright, and hair blowing in the breeze. Snow lifts me up, makes stand straighter, feel taller, invigorates me like few other things. I want to sing when it snows, and frequently do, and sometimes forget to keep it low enough so that people won't look askance at me as they pass by. I don't care if they do. It's snowing!

Some of my fondest memories involve trudging through the snow, headlong against the growls of winter. Snow builds up in my hair, melts against my forehead, and then freezes along my hairline. I reach my destination looking like Old Abominable in the Rudolph movie, and shake my head to let loose the storm in the entryway.

I love shoveling snow, too. It's hard work, but feels good to throw piles of the stuff around, working all the muscles in my body. And it's clear, as you work, that you've accomplished something -- every single shovelful is an obvious change in the landscape. The sense of achievement you get when you're finished, happily tired and leaning on your shovel, surveying the results of your labour? Priceless.

Then there's the morning wake-up, when you look out the window after the weather has passed. Everything, and I mean everything, is white. White on the rooftops, white on the roads, white on the trees, and the chimneys, and the cars, and the sidewalks. It's all white, and it's all clean, and it's all fresh. Sure, there are no leaves on the trees, and the green grass is covered, and the flowers are gone until May, but new-fallen snow has a beauty all of its own.

I love snow.

Hg