Love letter

I don’t know why I like snow.

It has something to do with no two snowfalls being alike.

It has something to do with being able to make things with it; forts, snowmen, snowballs, sled runs, etc.

It has something to do with cross county skiing between long rows of pine trees just before dawn when the snow if falling thick enough to make the landscape seem softly foggy and faintly blue.

It has something to do with the cold because I’ve always preferred cold, but also to the fact that if you get out in it and play around, you get quite nicely warm, but, unlike the summer, not too warm.

It has something to do with how snow looks at night, the luminous quality of a snow-lit landscape.

It has something to do with all the different ways it falls; thick and fast, slow and soft, or even, sometimes, almost sideways on the wind.

It has something to do with the sheer transforming beauty of a snowfall as well as the muffling silence.

It has something to do with memory, at least for me. Like seeing a place you’ve never been and finding it feels familiar. I think, oh, yes, I remember this. It reminds me of something I can’t quite name.

It has, unique oddity that I am, something to do with driving in it along completely snow-covered back roads. Perhaps the way the evergreens and bare trees hold the snow then, with a shiver, twitch it off. Or the way a dark red barn surrounded by evergreens stands out in the otherwise black and white landscape. Or even the way a snowfall will sometimes leave the road a black ribbon unfurling before me pulling me past houses with windows of soft welcoming yellow calling their owners home.