Let It Snow

I still love snow. We used to have a very large bobsled when I was kid. It took a tractor to pull it and a whole pile of kids and adults fit on it. Loads of fun and DANGER. When the north end of the lake would freeze hard enough, we would drive out on there with the bob sled. Otherwise we sailed down the snowy roads, bundled tightly against the cold, with the wind stinging our face.

We are enjoying the 10th snowiest season since they have been keeping track. So far this winter, we have had 35.5 inches. The snowiest was 1911 with just over 47 inches. So, if you are tired of winter, and have had enough of the white stuff, take heart. Nine other winters in the last 100 years have been snowier!

The Snow-Storm
Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hill and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farmhouse at the garden's end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.
Come see the north wind's masonry.
Out of an unseen quarry evermore
Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer
Curves his white bastions with projected roof
Round every windward stake, or tree, or door.
Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work
So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he
For number or proportion. Mockingly,
On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;
A swan-like form invests the hiddden thorn;
Fills up the famer's lane from wall to wall,
Maugre the farmer's sighs; and at the gate
A tapering turret overtops the work.
And when his hours are numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone, Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work,
The frolic architecture of the snow.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
1835