Snow notes

What day is it today?  Friday, I think.  Do I feel guilty for not being at work?  No, I do not.  No-one is. 

It’s strange how a fall of snow changes things.  The change in the outdoor scene is well known, how everything seems cleaner, softer, enchanted, but what is less so is its psychological effect.  It’s as though the white layer coating the land is also numbing the brain; we go into a mental freeze, waiting things out. 

This end-of-winter storm had been expected, and when it came, my reaction was interesting to experience.  Like almost everyone else, I had decided not to risk trying to get to work, and so settled quickly into a relaxed cabin mentality, waiting for the white blanket to be spread upon us. 

It had been cold for days, with a searing east wind compacting the ground, fostering strange swellings of ice on the hillsides and scouring the way for the snowstorm.  When it came, on the morning of the first day of March, it was a signal to forget about time.  Immediately I needed reminding what day of the week it was.  The fact that it was theoretically the start of spring only made things more unreal. 

The world went monochrome.  It snowed nearly all day, a fine dry powder stirred by a south-easterly gale, puffing in spouts from the roof.  We were eager but didn’t know what to do with ourselves.  We walked, examining ice formations by waterfalls.  We called in on friends while the storm gathered itself.  Returning home, enthusiasm gave way to a tedious lethargy.  The gale pushed smoke back down the chimney, so we gave up on the fire and retreated to bed to watch the expectant dusk go blue and the woods pile up with white.

The predicted half a metre proved to be merely the depth of my hand.  On the second morning, the powder had frozen into a solid crust that made footfall inordinately loud.  Every twig, blade of grass and stem of rush was layered in a glaze of ‘ammil’ ice.  We listened for cars on the road; there were none.  Fugitive lapwings barrelled westwards, pursued through a grey sky by a wind needled with a million points of ice.  What was it that was falling?  It was neither snow, nor rain, nor hail, nor sleet.  Glinting concave sections of tubular ice lay on the hard surface of the snow where the wind had rattled them down.

All this time, and a lack of motivation to make anything of it except look out of the window at what winter might do next.  I must write something – but the new page waited white and empty.  Blackbirds, seeming twice their normal size, bounced around on the snow in search of protein.  You retreated to bed with a headache; I reached for the whisky, devised pointless chores and thought of my children down in the town.

A stiff, dishevelled song thrush lay where it had died, eyes open, in the lee of a stone wall.  When I went back to show our friends’ children, just the wings and legs remained – it had been scavenged within hours.  Feebly fluttering redwings, their cream eye-stripes pushed up into a surprised expression by the cold, bobbled around the bases of trees and woodpiles, woozily striving to avoid the same fate.  I raked the snow off a pile of woodchips for the goldcrests to forage on invertebrates, strewed seeds on a table.  There was a firecrest here a few days before the storm.  The thought that so tiny a bird might survive it seemed far-fetched.

On the third day, rain began to grey the ice, washing the snow and our malaise away.  The occasional car started to nose along the road.  Your headache eased and you got out of bed.  The start of the thaw was too late for another song thrush that died in a box just inside the back door.

The sun emerged on the fourth day, producing green patches among the white.  A bee flew past; woodpeckers drummed and birds began to sing.  Still we did not drive anywhere, the roads slushy and opaque.  With the hint of warmth, relief.  Am I losing the thrill of snow I felt as a child?  The excitement of snowfall has been superseded by boredom and relief when it has gone.  Now we are impatient for the rewards of spring.  Will I never learn to take what comes?