The Snow

Perhaps it's my general discontent this week, but the snow today just got me. I looked out the window as I left my office for lunch, and all I could think about was grey and the need for light.

I grudgingly scooped the driveway, letting discontent grow at the fact that my neighbor uses his truck/snowplow to plow the street, and then he plows the piles he made up onto each of the neighbor's lawns.

After I was done, I stepped out of the garage onto the cement pad leading to my back door. You actually go in and out of the garage to get to the back door, a remnant of a poorly planned remodel I think.

Anyway, the back yard was silent. In my attempt at being more silent this week, I took off my headphones and watched. There's this thing that happens sometimes at night, where it's not the moon but somehow everything is bright with a pinkish light. I'd like it to be some result of enduring the snow that we get to see it, but it's probably pollution.

As I stood there, just watching, I remembered my favorite part of snow when I was little. I would enact a plan, on snow days, that never quite came to fruition. The plan was this--I would dig out a snow cave, preferably with an overhang above my head, make it nice and comfy inside with the snow smooth and rounded, and then I would take a book outside and read in my cozy pod.

I don't remember ever once getting to the part where I took a book outside to read in my snow cave, but the memory of it tonight gave me a reason to be thankful for the snow. For a moment, I even thought about building one tonight, knowing full well I'd never take a book outside and read in it.