Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
This is not August
As my MawMaw, of happy memory, used to say, the weather has been “airish.”
In yet another example of the settled science (cough) of global warming the temperatures dropped ‘way below freezing last week and, because there was a little bit of snow the newsies again and again filled time and space with vain repetitions of the tiresome and false “winter wonderland.”
Those who wake up on a 15-degree morning to discover a burst water line do not wax poetic about winter wonderlands.
One does not imagine that linemen, road crews, tow truck operators, police, fire, ambulance services, and others have ever alluded to working ten or more hours a day in freezing rain / sleet / hail as any sort of winter wonderland experience.
Because snow is uncommon here, the first flakes falling and swirling in eddies are fascinating. The cliché is that no two snowflakes are alike, but they seem to be, cold fluffs “that fall on my nose and eyelashes”
(The Sound of Mucous) and look exactly alike, differing only in size.
As the snow accumulates it softens the contours of everything, and bounces the available alight around so nicely that it seems almost to be a light source itself. The dark winter woods gradually become light winter woods, and somehow quieter.
During freezes the squirrels and birds work the feeders, which need frequent re-fillings (hint – chicken scratch from the feed store is much less expensive than designated bird seed, and the critters are just as fat and sassy on their proletarian diet). The cardinals especially stand out in winter.
In cold weather the neatly stacked firewood from three summers of carefully saving trimmed limbs as neat billets descends further every day. Turning over the bottom course means turning hibernating frogs and worms and fierce-looking horned beetles out of their winter homes. One trusts that they simply grumble a bit and then dig deeper and resume their sleep.
After a day or so, when the sun reappears, the barometer aspires to higher things and the air seems to harden, the snow is like that last guest, the one who won’t go away. Ice melting from the roof drips musically from the icicles and to the ground, and road surfaces steam as the dark asphalt converts sunlight into heat through radiationless transition (and let the people say “Thermodynamics”).
The aging snow lurks along fencerows, the bases of trees, and dark corners, seeming to withdraw into itself. It is not pretty anymore, and hangs around for days until one afternoon you realize that, like your firewood, it is all gone.
Just as the parental complaint that “Your room looks like it was hit by a hurricane!” is not necessarily a metaphor in August, “It’s freezing in here!” is not necessarily a metaphor in January.
And this is not August!
-30-
