A Walker in the Suburbs

We’ve had more than our usual share of flurries this winter. Snow without purpose, not driven, not sticking much, just dancing in the air.

One minute the day lightens, the next it grays, and then … it’s white out (though not whiteout).

This is snow-globe snow, decorative, ornamental, does not mean business. It could be lint from an errant dryer. Or ash from a meddlesome volcano. Or bits of fluff from a cottonwood tree.

But no, it is snow. It melts on the tongue. It coats my hair when I walk through it, which I did yesterday.

Flurries are difficult to photograph. They are ephemeral. It is part of their charm.

After several futile forecasts yielding nothing, we woke up this morning to a white world. Not quite an inch yet but it’s still falling and roads are cold enough that every flake is sticking.

Maybe weather-watchers knew this snow was on the way, but I didn’t, so I felt like a kid this morning when I glanced outside, saw the white coating on the deck, the flurries in the air. For just a minute I felt that leap in the heart: No school today! No school!

And then I remembered: I don’t go to school anymore. I go to work. And yes, we are having work today.

(We didn’t receive quite this much! This is an old photo…)

They were barely more than specks in the sky when Copper and I stepped out for our walk yesterday. Bits of fluff from an errant dryer vent, I thought at first, or airborne ash from a fire. I didn’t know that snow was coming. I should have. All morning the earth had that gray stillness it does before the weather changes, a pause, a turning from one element to another.

As we walked, snowflakes dotted Copper’s shaggy back. This would make a good picture, I said to myself several times — and every time I did he did his little doggie shake and they would all be gone.

When we came inside, I still thought the snow shower was a fleeting one. But it flurried the rest of the day and left us with a thin coating, our first of the season. In winter, the world looks better in white.

The name isn’t mine but I can’t think of a better one for a snowy October day, one of the few we’ve ever had in northern Virginia this early in the, well, we can’t really call it winter, can we? This early in the season — that’s better.

In honor of our snowy day, here’s a photo from the vault. With fond hopes that this is not the beginning of a hard winter to come.

Walks in the suburbs this weekend revealed the full damage from our recent snowstorm. Trees without tops, our own witch hazel decapitated. Large limbs littering yards and driveways. And in the woods, downed trees block paths.

The pears and fir trees took it hardest. They are bent and broken. But there is scarcely a yard that’s untouched. The light brown of sheared wood stands in stark contrast to the silvery gray of weathered trunks.

This is nature’s way of pruning dead wood. But unlike the gardener who trims kindly and judiciously, wicked weather takes what it wants. Its methods are ruthless not artful. The unkindest cut.

It came in with a whoosh and a bang and a crackle of light. At 2 p.m. it was raining, at 3 it was glopping (gobs of slush falling from the sky) and at 4 the snow was falling sideways at two inches an hour.

Through the quick-darkening afternoon and evening we heard claps of thunder, saw lightning flash. By midnight it was over. The west-facing flanks of trees were smeared with white, as if from a wayward paintbrush. Our bamboo was bent with the weight of the heavy snow. Today it is quiet, no plows, no cars. Just the whiteness of a spent world. Until yesterday we’d had a cold, dry winter. The thundersnow made up for it.