Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Softer Side of the February Fury

This morning at 10 am all was soft and peaceful. I took this picture then, actually.

Then....the snow came pouring out the sky like the floodgates of a turgid dam finally opening after a spring of many rains. At times we could barely see out to the tree perhaps 30 feet away. The only sound was snow upon snow as it glanced and ricocheted past itself like streams of crystal in the wind.

My dog has perfect the art of leaping out of the snow on all four legs the way a springbok runs on the Serengeti. At some point when this is occurring I shall videotape it, because otherwise the true hilarity of seeing it in motion is not to be believed. He trounced around in the snow and helped to play until a kid walked by with a shovel. Zen was then this poor child's best friend, even going so far as trying to steal his shovel. Poor beast must have thought the kid was trying to play fetch. Sadly, after that demonstration where he ignored us calling him, he won't be allowed to go play out in the snow again. He's too hyper and disobedient.

We later took a walk, Bob and Zen and I, to the end of the block and back. It was in the midst of the driving winds and the drifting snow that felt like painfully cold sand on the cheeks. There was something enlivening about it, as if we'd somehow conquered something by heading out in to the evening with the monster tearing around us and nipping at us with its icy teeth.

Part of me is sad that we'll begin to tame it in the morning, shoveling it in to piles and off our walkways. But for now it rules the night and the wind is a constant reminder that we are always only a few hours away from being stripped of our civilization and tossed to the winter.

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