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Still Life with Snow

Still Life with Snow

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Out and about yesterday, noticing with each turn how snow transforms the landscape.

First, it softens. That which was sharp is rounded; that which is sparse is full. It is landscape’s pancake makeup, its concealer, hiding blemishes, wrinkles and lines.

Next, it obscures. Mounds of white stuff pad corners so I can’t see around them. Parking lot mountains loom where I least expect them. Shortcuts disappear; only the straightaways remain.

And of course, it beautifies. It does so with utmost nonchalance, but it does so just the same. The little triangle park in Lexington, a bench and a lamppost, of no particular note, becomes a still life. The snow drapes itself like an expensive fabric; it sees more in us than we see in ourselves.

The Pause

The Pause

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Four years and a week after Snowmageddon we finally achieved the right mix of temperature and liquidity, of moisture from the Atlantic and cold from Canada. The models were right on — and we have a humdinger of a Nor’easter.

It began last night as I drove home from work, the first flakes dancing in the air, hardly visible in the looming dark. “Be where you need to be by 7 p.m.,” the meteorologists said, and I barely made it, arriving home with only minutes to spare.

The coating I went to sleep with has, uh, filled out nicely during the night, and outside is 10 inches or more of the white stuff. The last time we had this much snow I started a blog. This time I’m just aiming to get the laundry done.

But house work, creative work — none of it matters.  What matters is the pause, the break, the caesura.

No one is going anywhere. And that’s fine with me.

Snow in Kentucky

Snow in Kentucky

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Weather forecasts told us the rain would freeze, that sleet and snow would fall, so in anticipation of being sidelined today, I went for a jog yesterday in what I thought was light rain.

Not for long. As I ran, the rain grew heavier and colder, it took on substance. It didn’t hollow out so much as beef up. It meant business.

This was not January’s fluffy stuff. This snow has clung and settled. It has hemmed me in — at least for the morning.

But afternoon is almost here.

Hesitation

Hesitation

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These are cold days in Northern Virginia (emphasis on Northern)! A person (or a dog) might have every reason to bound out the door, trot across the deck but then screech to a full stop at the top of the stairs.

Hesitation is in season.

“Do I really want to go out in this?”is what I imagine Copper is thinking.

Which is similar to my thoughts this morning:  It’s 6 a.m., 4 degrees F. — and, of course, it’s dark. “Do I really want to go out in this?”

And the answer, for both of us, for different reasons, is yes!

Tale of Two Railings

Tale of Two Railings

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Yesterday’s snow meant business. Right from the start, the flakes flying only briefly before they touched and stuck. And unlike recent, more iffy snows, this one light, dry, easier to shovel and scrape.

It piled up slowly but inexorably, and by late afternoon, snow on the deck railing looked about three to four inches. After several more hours of steady precipitation (minus a little from the blowing), this morning’s total looks closer to six. And if today’s temperature is any indication (3 degrees F), it will be with us for a few days.

Gee, I guess it’s winter or something. It hasn’t been for a years, so we’re out of practice.

Company Town: Closed

Company Town: Closed

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Living in a company town produces some funny situations. Like today. The federal government is closed and so is my university. No complaints there, although deadlines being deadlines, I’ll be working anyway.

The funny thing is the unanimity of opinion. And the reliance on experts, in this case meteorologists. There’s not a flake of snow flying but we’re all hunkered down. The reason, of course, is traffic. In the last few years late-breaking snow storms have produced jams of biblical proportions, people arriving home seven, eight hours after they left for what they thought would be an hour-long commute.

So we’re taking no chances. We’re playing it safe. We’re grinding the wheels of government and commerce to a halt. We’re calling it a snow day.

Now all we need is the snow!

Single Digits

Single Digits

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Yesterday I awoke to a temperature of 1 degree F. This morning we are basking in a relatively balmy 5 degree F. Which has me thinking about digits, single in specific but also digits in general.

When I studied “new math” in the old days we called them “tens and ones.”  Maybe I’ve just forgotten, but I don’t think we used the term “place value.” Then again, the “new math” I studied in grammar school was discontinued by the time I reached junior high.

The word digit, though — it’s been around a while. And I thought of it yesterday not only because the temperature was in the single digits but also because the temperature most affected my digits. My fingers and toes were aching with the cold after my single-digit walk (nine minutes, tops) from Metro to the office.

So this post is a paean to digits, to the fingers and toes, the most exposed; to the basic unit of measure, the original abacus; to the root of digital and all the good things (!) that derive from it.

We start with the body and move ever outward. Just think how far we’ve come.

Polar Vortex

Polar Vortex

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Snowmaggedon. Snowquester. And now … the Polar Vortex.

Used to be, only hurricanes had names. Now rain, snow — even cold snaps — do.

There’s something homey about naming a weather system, something that binds us to it. True, there is a cheekiness about it, a bit like the arm-clasping, shoulder-hugging person who calls you by a nickname you’ve never liked or used. But it makes it easy to refer to it later; it’s a handle, a quick reference.

But listening to the wind roar in yesterday, hearing its powerful rush, seeing this morning’s thermometer reading (1!), I have this feeling that the weather would rather remain anonymous, mysterious, even magisterial. That which should not be spoken aloud, only witnessed.

Reducing it to a nickname may make it easier to take, but it doesn’t diminish its power.

Wind and Snow

Wind and Snow

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The wind woke me. It roared in from the west, carrying single-digit temperatures and an arctic bite.

This is cold that takes your breath away, that is no longer bracing but something to brace yourself for.

The bamboo hangs its head, weighted with the white stuff. Maybe the winds will blow it clean.

Deep Currents

Deep Currents

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Temperature extremes of the last week have us reeling. I walk in shorts and t-shirt one day, in sweat shirt and jacket the next.

A few days ago, in a t-shirt, I walked through air as changeable as water, as strange to the touch as those warm and cool spots you swim through in a spring-fed lake.

It occurred to me then that not only was the air like the water, but the weather was, too. Alternating puddles of days, as mysterious in their origins as those deep currents.