Spring Snow

In the morning everything was silent. A Saturday, and the unexpected sight of white everywhere, with snow still coming down. It was one of those felicitous weather channel oversights, the storm passing to the north, insignificant accumulations on the ground, etcetera, with somewhere close to a foot of fresh white everywhere. Because it is March, it is of the sticky variety, making the trees look beautiful, festooned with the Yankee version of Spanish Moss. The wetness of this snow reminds me that the eskimos and other northern tribes have many names for snow, not just the handful we are familiar with, such as powder snow, corn snow, wet or dry snow. The sun is hot enough that it will burn it off within a few days. But this treat offered us the opportunity to ski at the reservation in Pound Ridge, so we went there aftern noon just after the snow stopped and the sun returned. The parking lot had one or two dozen cars in it. Although we saw several people there, some arriving, some leaving, once we snapped on our skiis and headed out on a familiar trail, aside from a nicely broken in track, we saw almost no one. The woods just swallowed everyone up in the trees and hills. But for the birds and falling clumps of snow, it was quiet, the solitude deafening. The more quiet we are, of course, the more we often hear. But the sounds were unanticipated. That is what was so much fun, the reward of being out in nature, expecting the unexpected. This was not to be a few hours of startling revelations, of a grosbeak or a pileated woodpecker drilling into a tree en route. It was more an opportunity to enjoy the last of winter in our backyard, to be out in it, to have fun with my daughter. I am proud that somehow, with all the mistakes I have made, I have succeeded in introducing the work of cross country skiiing as pleasure, along with its aesthetic of natural appreciation. Although her peer group think that racing downhill is great, getting up the mountain by fossil fuel and then rushing down pell mell to do it over again, standing in a lift line with hundreds of people, she knows that cross country skiing is unique and unobtrusive. She charges along quite cabably and loves to attempt a tuck goning downhill. I like both activities, as I enjoy sailing and powerboating. We respect the wind and the speed of sailing; we respond to the freshness of being out in a fresh nature that most urbanites will never see. We feel rich, doing that which draws upon our energy, reddens our cheeks and makes us sweat. These are a few of what the spring snow brought us this day.