snow – whereIwonder&why

Well Here we Are in a Blizzard

Which blizzard, you ask. Choose your whirlwind.

I am sitting inside with the majority of those of us in the Northeast US who are (1) receiving a snow blizzard, and (2) have the freedom, place, wherewithal to be inside. I have in my mind that the bitter, chill winds I am from inside looking at and shivering at (even as I watch numerous juncos absolutely rollicking in this, their apparent ideal weather conditions), are at this very moment buffeting some who haven’t inside to look out from.

At the moment, I have just finished spending awhile watching my very kind neighbors from two houses back, a father and adult son, plow the mouth of my driveway, my front walkway, the sidewalk that passes in front of my house, and shovel off the entire front porch and steps. This snow is heavy, I’m guessing its psi exceeds mine. (Is that even a legitimate measurement to use here?)

What amuses me in both these photographs is that you can’t see the abundant, steadily falling, eagerly blowing snow between you, the viewer, and any stationary item viewed. But you can see, oh, those poor branches, the tonnage each fistful of snow represents. The shrubs and trees are burdened under the weight.

So, what do you think of your one beautiful planet? Do you find it as fascinating as I do? Are you as fascinated by the ways beauty can be trampled, as you are by the way it can remain even in the face of disregard, distress, diminishment, dis-?

You may have noticed, if you’ve been reading me for a time, that I am grateful always for the poems of Robert Frost. So, since today, and reflective of my immediately previous post early the month of February 2026, I am not going to raise your spirits nor mine one iota, I will share some thoughts that Frost expresses better:

On a Tree Fallen Across the Road
(to hear us talk)

The tree the tempest with a crash of wood
Throws down in front of us is not to bar
Our passage to our journey’s end for good,
But just to ask us who we think we are

Insisting always on our own way so.
She likes to halt us in our runner tracks,
And make us get down in a foot of snow
Debating what to do without an ax.

And yet she knows obstruction is in vain:
We will not be put off the final goal
We have it hidden in us to attain,
Not though we have to seize earth by the pole

And tire of aimless circling in one place,
Steer straight off after something into space.

[from New Hampshire (1923)]

The Fear of God

If you should rise from Nowhere up to Somewhere,
From being No one up to being Someone,
Be sure to keep repeating to yourself
You owe it to an arbitrary god
Whose mercy to you rather than to others
Won’t bear too critical examination.
Stay unassuming. If for lack of license
To wear the uniform of who you are,
You should be tempted to make up for it
In a subordinating look or tone,
Beware of coming too much to the surface
And using for apparel what was meant
To be the curtain of the inmost soul.

[from Steeple Bush (1947)]

Closed for Good

Much as I own I owe
The passers of the past
Because their to and fro
Has cut this road to last,
I owe them more today
Because they’ve gone away

And come not back with steed
And chariot to chide
My slowness with their speed
And scare me to one side.
They have found other scenes
For haste and other means.

They leave the road to me
To walk in saying naught
Perhaps but to a tree
Inaudibly in thought,
“From you the road receives
A printing coat of leaves.

“And soon for lack of sun,
The prospects are in white
It will be further done,
But with a coat so light
The shape of leaves will show
Beneath the brush of snow.”

And so on into winter
Till even I have ceased
To come as a foot printer,
And only some slight beast
So mousy or so foxy
Shall print there as my proxy.

[from In the Clearing (1962)]

Cold Advisory (It turns out this is as much a metaphor, here a warning, as a meteorological advising; keep reading this post at the peril of your good mood)

Such are the words in the bottom of my screen as I powered up my computer at 2:36AM EST. It is 10 degrees F right now here. Not bad in the scheme of weather the past couple of weeks. It is expected to fall back down below 0 degrees on Saturday and snow.

Weather ice-breaker over! Have you ever wondered who initiated using the term “ice-breaker” to get attendees at a meeting, a conference, a party comfortable with each other? Do you happily participate in these ice-breakers? I am always reticent. I am a person who enjoys solitude. Are these last two sentences I typed a guaranteed pairing? I was also going to ask, do people in, say, Florida “get” the term ice-breakers? But, yeah, they chop ice up for their cooling drinks. And, come to think of it, in the past week, a large portion of Floridians may have even stepped out to ice on their paths.

Brings me to this point to make–watch out, I’m in a bad mood. How bad? Well, if you don’t end up seeing this post, then it was a wretched mood, and I used the blog to air my densely felt mood and then deleted it. Would that the mood be so easily removable. If you do see this post, then perhaps the cup of cocoa that I made for myself did its job and the tone here lifts.

Hard to consider of late. There doesn’t seem to be much going on that lifts tones. Well, kind of lifted, I brought my snow shoes up from the basement and trekked out in my backyard (all 30′ by 12′ of it) and refilled the birdfeeders. Quite the adventure. Then I trod on some of my neighbors’ snow buried front yards. Not the sidewalks. We are a diligent neighborhood, everyone shoveled or snow blew their sidewalks beginning two seconds after the last snow flake of the storm. I am not complaining!! As I spend considerably more time walking surfaces with shoe-shoes as opposed to snowshoes, I am happy for the cleared sidewalks.

I am also, I want to say here, very happy for my neighbors who snowblew my sidewalk! And who regularly come along after each storm and do, at minimum, the end of my driveway, usually more than that. And who, in a day or two are going to Florida for a month, ah well. The sidewalk snow and I will just have to meet throughout February. I will shovel it, it will pile high. Such are the terms of agreement in snowy winters. We need the moisture!! We need it badly, more than do the immense and immensely hot and thirsty machine brains being constructed throughout the world to no good end other than to turn us into their minions. Do I sound paranoid? Or…?

As I say, this post may not see the light of day. However. My car did, so…

To take this photograph looking to the back of my house, I am standing with my back to the now cleared hood of my car. I’m pretty proud of my shoveling prowess. In case you hadn’t noticed.

There is so much that needs to be righted. You know, there always is. Yes, you know that. But there are levels of how righted things need to become. And the hole of errancy dug right now is deep and full. May we become how good we can be, love being that self, and share it.

Winter Weather

Hello

I am pretty sure I am in a better mood than when I wrote and posted my blog last time, which was last year now. I sit before my window watching the snow start again this early afternoon. Six hours almost to the minute that I watched it start this morning. At that time my phone weather app assured me that it was cloudy out and a “wintry mix” was not to begin until noon. That early morning snow lasted half an hour and left a good, solid, slippery dusting. I trod through it around mid-morning from my house to the river. Such a wonderful river. It flowed on this day silently, slowly. It carries a skim of ice along the edges, and no visible debris–always a gift from a river that traverses this city and many others along its not inconsiderable length from source to sea.

As I stood two seagulls, about 10 minutes apart flew northwest along the river route. Then 25 geese in a double V that shifted shape as I watched, front runners falling back, rear guard sliding forward, flew east turning, as they shape shifted, toward the northeast. I listened and, yes, thank you geese, they began a conversation among themselves. Then fell silent again. There was little other sound, if I inclined my attention upward. As I leveled my gaze again, I heard and then saw the everpresent vehicular cadences. If only we had not invented combustion engines and their unavoidable audibility, nor, now, for that matter, electric, which hum quite loudly. We would not, of course, have such long distance in short time spans mobility, but is that bad? Here is something to think about. Given our propensities–to imagine and then image every place we go in our own image–is it bad to limit our reach? I wonder.

I thought I’d include a cloudy sky. Can you see the layers of clouds, or do you see only the monochromaticity? Blink and look again. It was a moment of peace to watch up to it.

I must tell you that after it snowed this early morning, and as I walked back uphill from the river to the section of the city where I live, it warmed to a couple of degrees over freezing and the snow coat all disappeared. Then, it sleeted. Then is was still and the pavements everywhere returned to visibility from their early morning bright whiteness. And now, early afternoon, the second snow is falling–larger, distinctive shapes distinctly visible, and blanketing all within view. The dogwood out back and the birches out front are wearing attractive and increasingly lofty shawls. (BTW, my phone says it is 37 degrees and sleeting right now. It is NOT!)

So, these are today’s little mysteries.

“Whose woods these are
I think I know
His house is in the village though
He will not see me stopping here…..”

I’m pretty sure anyone who has gone to school in the USA recognizes these lines as part of Robert Frost’s poem “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening” quoted here from memory, so I cannot vouch for the correct punctuation or stanza breaks.

Oil up your snow shoes!