Up North, they make fun of the way Southerners handle the snow. They say we can’t handle it–which definitely seems true.
Our whole world shuts down: this is our third morning and I haven’t seen a soul outdoors yet today because it’s 8 degrees, because everything froze again last night and still is frozen, because for days we’ve walked–eyes wide–in the wonder of the snowfall and in so doing inadvertently tamped all the powder into ice.
Which now we can’t walk on.
We can’t handle the snow, so we look at it, rush out to play in it, wonder at this strange magic of precipitation that descends in merry dignity.
For a few days, we feel the honor.
On Thursday it will be near 70, and all the snow will be gone. Which is for the best, because in the South, we can’t handle the snow.
But the snow is, in truth, at least somewhat unbearable. Unbearable the way, for a few days, it asserts for us the lines and horizons of our world, the irregularity of shrub and lawn. The accent it lends to the isolated chirp of a bird. How it shows us the footprint of cat and squirrel and something smaller, something we didn’t see.
How the bare trees cradle it, for just a little while, in the crooks of their bare arms.
