Let it Snow

The snow has finally stopped (I think). It's been snowing for three or four days, and before that, back in December, we got three feet, so the view has been white through my window for more than a month. There is a certain kind of fortitude in people who live in the Northeast, and specifically in Central New York. We're used to snow, and are accustomed to bundling up in coats and hats and gloves and scarves and boots so we can march out there and take on whatever the weather has doled out. I wake up every morning to the sound of snowplows, and when I burrow back down under the electric blanket I say a silent 'thank you' to those hardy souls who get up before dawn to clear the roads for the rest of us.

People who live in southern climates are always posting photos of sunset beaches and green golf courses to torture (they think) those of us who live in the north. My Florida friends say "It was 75 today!" and my Memphis pals talk about taking walks -- in light jackets -- by the river. Another friend, this one in Arkansas, was griping about the temperature being in the high 30s one day last week. I felt like telling her, "When your 15-pound dog goes sliding off the back porch into a snowbank and disappears, then you can complain."

Yes indeed, there are days when I would like nothing better than to see some grass or sand and be able to go outside in a tee shirt. Still, there is something really special about this white world. There is a silence that's hard to explain if you haven't experienced it, a hush that falls over the town that makes me take a deep breath and be thankful. Snow is magic, crystalizing on every twig and sprinkling the houses with sugar. When I get up in the middle of the night and look out at snow falling, glistening in the streetlights and sparkling on my neighbors' roofs, there's a purity of nature that words can't quite express.

So today I thought, for all my southern friends, I'd post some photos of February in this part of the world.