Snow in the Pasture
Thursday, December 18th, 2008
Snow began falling at dusk, which, in the softening light, made it nearly impossible to distinguish its strength. Once the sun finally set, the flakes could be discerned as big and far-spaced – the signs of a wet snow – and yet there was accumulation. What seemed like a harmless blowing storm from the warmth of home was more treacherous to anyone moving about in the fencerows and pastures.
In a few moments, the tree lines were coated, blotting out the tree branches as the only distinguishable landmark in the white-gusting snow. Small cyclones whipped across the frozen glass blades and the pavement, swirling under dimly lit circles cast from the lamp posts attached to the barn. Sub-zero temperatures had begun to bleach the asphalt in the afternoon before the snow fell, marked by long white streaks that had been blown into feathery shapes across the streets and parking lots. But now, with the ground covered, the gusts left sweeps where they’d cut the ground like an angled knife.
“This is the weather that would have sent us home from school,” I thought, and saw myself out on the snowy sidewalk, younger, warmly dressed and aimless, just happy that it was snowing and that there was no place to be.
One winter I’d gotten ready in a hurry, dressed in layers, and covered any exposed skin except the places around my eyes and mouth and went out to play and now, then finding himself there, it all felt anticlimactic. I felt lost. The cold wind and the warm hat and heavy hood kept my head slanted toward the pavement.
I stood in the driveway, slid my boots through the snow. The sound was amplified in the still air, returned to me by the house fronts that stood rigid and susceptible to the blowing winds. The sun had come out and the space above me was so vivid it was if there was a cord connected to a power source and someone had hooked the blue sky into it for the day. But the air was still blowing, rattling doors and windows, ruffling clothes, and watering eyes.
I was warm and I started to feel the outline of my body beneath the clothes. My toes were still cold under two layers of socks. Those were the days when I was able to experience life, before I became a backset writer who considered the world and recorded it. The warmth of house is preferable to me now, not the wet snow, and that might be the greatest travesty – the setback that keeps me from being a prominent writer one day: it seems that more frequently now the watching has become a suitable replacement for the living.
