Outside our cabin and the heavy snow begins to come down
In the darkness that is this early morning, I can not well see the snow that fell throughout the night. I shine my flashlight through the glass, and the small arc of light sweeps across nothing but white. Before dinner last night, we stuck a ruler in the snow collecting from this new storm on the table out there on the deck. By dinner, the ruler was covered. By the time Forrest went to sleep, he took his tape measure with him to check the depth, and read over 20 inches. Now, the table, which is our snow gage, is covered. The snow from the deck has risen to reach it, engulf it, smooth out the surface of the deck so that chairs, rails, tables, all become a smooth white wave.
Still, the snow is falling. A mid winter storm. So perfect in her abundance. This is what we call a “good” storm.
The silence is incomparable. The river, the trees, trails and life, all are covered with this heavy load. The cabin is tucked in. The air is filled with falling snow. Sound, if any was made, is carried down by the millions of tumbling flakes and absorbed into the generous layer covering our world in white.
Last night we stood outside and listened to the snow falling. The sound is like the softest of rain. So delicate, we hold our breaths to hear. A dim and velvety pattering all around us as the snow lands, collects, the tiny facetted shapes holding together to form one smooth sparkling mass in the limited beam of the flashlight. Coming down the snow shimmers, each flickering flake radiating like so many crystalline tears, and I wanted to cry for the beauty that overwhelmed us, surrounded and engulfed by so many fine crystals falling so gracefully from the black sky.
The excitement in our house was almost uncontained. We anticipate the same sleepless excitement that Christmas brings. Perhaps even more. Oh, how my boys love the snow. I suppose like a surfer waiting for the big wave. They were ready to burst.
In the middle of the night, I woke to hear Alan pushing through his dog door. I did not hear the ensuing click-click of his nails on the wooden floor. I assumed he remained outside. He still does not like that dog door. I found my way downstairs, grabbed a flashlight and stepped just outside in hopes of finding him near. He was not there. No sense in calling. He can not hear. His tracks stayed close to the cabin, a narrow trench plowed through three feet of snow, then turning the corner and disappearing from sight. I slip on a bathrobe and tall boots and head out to find him. There are few places he can go. He can follow the trench to a clearing beneath a huge Blue Spruce perhaps 12 feet from the cabin. From there, I can see attempts at busting through the snow in other directions. Failed attempts, given up, the trench dead ends. He must have returned to the spruce.
Now, my boots are far beneath the level of snow. My bathrobe drags through the soft powder. If I am to look further for him, I will need to be properly dressed. I follow the trench and return to the cabin. In one final thought before heading back out on my rescue mission, I check his bed in Forrest’s room. And there he is, sound asleep.
How often have I “lost” something only to find it exactly where it belongs? The last place I think to look.
And what about the birds in the trees, trees loaded with arching, heavy white arms? I consider the wild ones, the animals out there on the mountain, in this storm, tucked in somewhere, perhaps beneath other big trees throughout the mountain, seeking shelter, protection, acceptance that they can not they can not hunt, find feed, travel. They remain holed up in this deep white powder, despite their hunger, and allow this storm to pass, then await the snow to settle. Their days of moving about the mountain with ease are over for this season. They will long for the brighter days of spring to set up the snow, melt and glaze the surface, and enable them once again to move more freely about their mountain.
Now, spring seems a long ways away.
Now, I await daylight in this heavy darkness and silence. It is leaden, a grave in which I am softly swallowed in this tender bottomless blanket of white. I feel submerged, as if underwater. A languid, fluid feeling of lightness, weightlessness, endlessness, as I glimpse outside and see the ground level rising higher and higher still.
And for a while, I hear nothing at all.