Ah, tis the sound of the snowblower in the morning
First big snow. Finding out the painful way that my broken wrist is not healed enough to do much real shoveling, I approached the snowblower cautiously so as not to startle it. Poured half a bottle of Heet into the tank, primed the pump, said a tweet-sized prayer to the god Toro and pushed the button. Yes! Power! Life is good.
Now, of course, it’s eight hours and several additional inches of snow later, dark as a dungeon and I must venture out to Council meeting. Ah, but for a while there, the world was white and beautiful. House sparrows, chickadees and juncos mobbed the birdfeeder in such numbers that at times the bushes and ground were covered with little brown twitching bodies. Kind of creepy, actually.
When I was a small child I couldn’t wait to get outside to build forts in the humongous drifts that fell in the snow belt. I resented the vacation days that were so snowy they would have warranted a day off had they fallen on a school day. As a teen and young adult, all that mattered was whether or not the roads were clear enough to get to the ski slopes. The older I get the less I get out. But I still know how to dress for winter and I still love to stand knee-deep in snow staring up at the winter stars, breathing the tangy cold air.
Later,
Jane