Is it snowing or just blowing? That’s often my question first thing in the morning, when I look out the window.
Either way, white stuff is sailing past horizontally, and nature is busy creating what Ralph Waldo Emerson called “the mad wind’s night-work, the frolic architecture of the snow.”
That white vastness beckons, promising adventure. And it keeps its promise.
It’s best to avoid driving on some days like this. The road may be perfectly dry, because the wind has blown the snow away from the surface. But the landscape beside it is a Sahara of snow, which will swirl across the road in huge white clouds without warning.
Suddenly all you can see is white. The headlights of approaching cars emerge from the white mist like pairs of ghosts. You navigate by watching the vertical roadside markers. Thank heaven the highway department adds a few extra feet at the top this time of year.
Where is all that snow so busy going? Oh, here and there. Who knows?
The question of the day will be whether to shovel out the drifts that are in your way or wait until later, because your tunnels will surely blow in again a few days hence.
Either way, it’s not the kind of labor that engenders coronaries. For the most part, the shoveling is like hefting gigantic spoonfuls of confectioners sugar.
The genuine labor is snowshoeing, as I find when I head off toward a neighbor’s house so my dog can play with his dog. The elliptical and exercise bike gather dust in the house, because this excursion across the back yard is a far better workout.
Last week’s trails have drifted in and some of them are invisible now. I never know whether the next step will be solid, more or less, or whether I will sink to my hips where the snowy slope appears gentle over a sudden drop in the terrain.
It’s all too possible to find yourself tipping sideways and sinking to the chest in “quicksnow,” the winter version of quicksand. Believe me, it can be difficult to lift two snowshoes to the surface when they carry with them several feet of powder!
All too often, the dog follows close behind me and steps on my metal heels, adding to the workout. But sometimes he gets bored with my tramping and decides to run around me.
This morning the snow was as tall as he is, and for a moment he fell into quicksnow, momentarily as stranded as a sedan stuck in a snowdrift.
There are two wonders to this wonderland: the fact that it seldom seems cold if I wear warm gloves and enough layers, and the randomness of that architecture of snow. Here, the surface is swept entirely clean. But right there stands a snow sculpture, trapping the little sports car in the garage.
Just as well. I wouldn’t dare take it out in this anyway.
© Lois Wingerson, 2016
You can see new entries of Living Dubois every week if you sign up at the top of the right column at www.livingdubois.com.
Here’s our first Christmas tree in Dubois.
Here’s the last tree we had in Brooklyn. It looks like a fashion model in comparison to the rangy, lanky specimen we have in Dubois. But it dropped needles like crazy. This year’s tree sucks it up from the tree stand like beer and holds on like a cowboy at the rodeo.
When we got our less-than-perfect tree into the Wyoming house, snow was still falling from the branches and there was ice on the trunk. Of course we had to re-cut the trunk. I got on the other side of the saw, and pulled ineptly, holding onto the trunk as we sawed through about four inches of sticky, sappy wood.
The house looks and smells wonderful inside, and there’s a winter wonderland outside. Since we put up and decorated the tree, I have seen through that back window behind it two moose, a rabbit, many deer, the usual cattle, and a lone wolf crying out to find a mate.
“I don’t know what it is,” Andrea said to me the other day. “There’s just something about it. You get out there and you just feel happy.”
I have been known to remark that Dubois resembles the kingdom of heaven, because so many of our entertaining events take place for the benefit of charity.
“waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water; the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp, the grass shall become reeds and rushes … No traveler, not even fools, shall go astray [I heard a few chuckles at these words]. No lion shall be there, nor shall any ravenous beast come upon it; they shall not be found there, but the redeemed shall walk there.”
The time-honored place to announce items for sale, along with tag sales and events such as wine tastings and art shows, is the Roundup (aka the “poop sheet”), put out weekly by the VFW and delivered to shops around town. We always pick up the Roundup on Wednesday or Thursday, and scan it eagerly.
