Strong Reflection
It's snowing tonight. The flakes started this afternoon lightly, meandering down in the breezes, melting on the pavement as I tried to focus on my Greek and ignore the first real winter weather of this calendar year. When I finally left it was coming down thickly, blowing straight into my face no matter which way I turned (how does that always happen? how does the wind know?) and upon my final return the sidewalks gave off the squelching crunch of light powder compressed underfoot. Not as satisfying as the crunch of breaking through the icy crust, but it's certainly a start. There's something magical about the snow for me that goes beyond the wonder of a dull cityscape transformed into a playground. A big storm like this one, projected to drop 8 to 10 inches, takes me back to the snow in my childhood (both distant and recent) when the mountains would be covered and we'd rush home after church on Sunday to drive to the snow. "Up to the snow" we would go, swinging around the curve at 4000 feet - the lowest it ever really came and lasted - onward past Chilao and Newcomb's Ranch with all the motercycles out front. Good french fries, especially after 40 minutes on the road. Up to the ski lifts or Buckthorn where there were picnic tables and small ravines. I could never stay on course, always diving off our giant plastic saucers at the last moment to avoid trees. We would eat frozen thin mints and cheddar cheese sandwiches with gherkins and French's Mustard; drink hershey's hot chocolate from the big green thermos, still burning hot from its pot on the stove. We would know it was time to leave when my hand and feet go too cold and I would start to cry.
That is the snow for me - the mountains, gaters over my boots, building snow-cats or snow-bears but never snow-men it seemed. A quiet oasis and escape from the city. I still get excited when it snows enough to make angels on the quads or for a good midnight snowball fight around campus, although I've never been any good at those. I'm going sledding tomorrow down the little hill by the library, sitting on my little yellow Daredevil disc. It's not much, but it will do when my mountains are so far away, and warm and dry this winter. Maybe my canadian saucer will bear as well as it did last year, careening down the hills made by the plows - a four-foot course but thrilling for the few seconds you slide down, trying to keep hands and feet in the air, feeling the power of gravity and the rush of the wind.
Why does snow gleam so white? I suppose the same reason that Mirror Lake in Yosemite gets its name. Some reflective quality in the bonds of hydrogen and oxygen that shines our light back at us, gleaming under streetlamps and headlights. It's odd to look out a window and watch snow falling between two buildings without external light - it's backlight by the opposing structure and seems like black rain falling, changing to ethereal white when it hits the ground and is finally lit from above. I am tempted to run giggling through the flakes, kicking up the dusty clouds, twirling on the slick sidewalk but mostly I refrain, and only skip here and there when I think no one is paying attention. It seems unfair to me that all these people get their snow so easily. I had to work for it as a child - an hour in the car each way, a wet and cold tramp to a good spot for sledding, peeing behind a log, watching the heat melt a hole one foot? two feet? deep, looking for tracks which I could never identify. Here snow is only exciting while it falls, for how can it entrance when covered with the black soot of city life, crusted and churned? I wonder about the way the snow reflects us, in so many ways.
I wonder how this writing reflects me. Is the mirror it displays warped or clear? Bubbled, or like the funhouse that twists an image but keeps it smooth? Refracting like broken glass - the same bits and pieces mingled and seen from different angles all at once? I try to be myself, but I never speak like this - I suppose I am afraid of the ridicule of such pretension, as it would seem, in conversation. And I don't quite think like this either, although I do for this purpose since I don't edit once I write. Mostly. Here's hoping I don't lose faith, and keep writing as I have hoped to do for so long, and failed time and time again. Here's to the futile hope of sketching every snowflake before your intent breath melts the crystals away.
That is the snow for me - the mountains, gaters over my boots, building snow-cats or snow-bears but never snow-men it seemed. A quiet oasis and escape from the city. I still get excited when it snows enough to make angels on the quads or for a good midnight snowball fight around campus, although I've never been any good at those. I'm going sledding tomorrow down the little hill by the library, sitting on my little yellow Daredevil disc. It's not much, but it will do when my mountains are so far away, and warm and dry this winter. Maybe my canadian saucer will bear as well as it did last year, careening down the hills made by the plows - a four-foot course but thrilling for the few seconds you slide down, trying to keep hands and feet in the air, feeling the power of gravity and the rush of the wind.
Why does snow gleam so white? I suppose the same reason that Mirror Lake in Yosemite gets its name. Some reflective quality in the bonds of hydrogen and oxygen that shines our light back at us, gleaming under streetlamps and headlights. It's odd to look out a window and watch snow falling between two buildings without external light - it's backlight by the opposing structure and seems like black rain falling, changing to ethereal white when it hits the ground and is finally lit from above. I am tempted to run giggling through the flakes, kicking up the dusty clouds, twirling on the slick sidewalk but mostly I refrain, and only skip here and there when I think no one is paying attention. It seems unfair to me that all these people get their snow so easily. I had to work for it as a child - an hour in the car each way, a wet and cold tramp to a good spot for sledding, peeing behind a log, watching the heat melt a hole one foot? two feet? deep, looking for tracks which I could never identify. Here snow is only exciting while it falls, for how can it entrance when covered with the black soot of city life, crusted and churned? I wonder about the way the snow reflects us, in so many ways.
I wonder how this writing reflects me. Is the mirror it displays warped or clear? Bubbled, or like the funhouse that twists an image but keeps it smooth? Refracting like broken glass - the same bits and pieces mingled and seen from different angles all at once? I try to be myself, but I never speak like this - I suppose I am afraid of the ridicule of such pretension, as it would seem, in conversation. And I don't quite think like this either, although I do for this purpose since I don't edit once I write. Mostly. Here's hoping I don't lose faith, and keep writing as I have hoped to do for so long, and failed time and time again. Here's to the futile hope of sketching every snowflake before your intent breath melts the crystals away.
posted by trophywife at 11:42 PM
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