One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.
Dylan Thomas, A Child’s Christmas in Wales
It has been snowing here in Humptulips County the last two days. The snowfall has been gentle, but persistent. Blizzards are not the norm for our county, but intermittent flurries are. We haven’t accumulated much in the way of depth, but our roads are icy and full of abandoned vehicles. We don’t generally see much snow in Humptulips County and, when we do, we are always unprepared to do anything but flee at the first flake.
Here on the farm, we are enjoying the snowfall. On Sunday, I purposefully waited until the advent of a heavier fall to walk down to our roadside mailbox to collect the Sunday New York Times. I wanted to walk in the snow in a heavy coat and hat for the first time this year, and to poke my walking stick into the snow to test its depth. I was anticipating the peculiar hush that envelopes the land when it is snow covered and the resulting quietude. Distant road noise is muted and the soughing of wind in the trees and birdsong prevail over everything but the crunching of one’s own shoes. Flocks of starlings flit from tree to tree, or even from a tree to the same tree, without any observable motivation comprehensible by humanity. Rabbit tracks tell of the passage of a hare from an unknown food source to his warm den. Life is lived by all creatures at its most basic level.
It is during a snowfall that I can best imagine the land as it must have been 200 years ago, and on my snowbound walks I always feel as if I am walking backward in time. Everything is more primitive, more elemental. During my snow bound walks, I feel a greater affinity for those who lived on and worked this land those many years ago. I know for a fact that the simple pleasure of walking through snow is a pleasure shared with my forebears and I can feel them close by: huffing from the added exertion caused by the snow’s depth; pushing off with their walking sticks or swinging the stick at snow accumulated on a low hung tree branch; enjoying the warmth of hats and gloves; perspiring lightly from exertion inside their heaviest coats. I do not know them by name, but I share this unchanged experience with them. We walk together on such days in unspoken, but acknowledged, anonymous companionship.
It will take far more than the inch or so of snow we have at the moment to transport me very far back in time. I only got a taste of things to come on Sunday. Yesterday, I was back at work in the city watching the snow fall from my office window. I left work early to miss the madness of Humptulips County’s evening commute, and in that I guessed well. While many experienced a two hour or longer commute due to general unpreparedness, I watched the dusk settle on our snow covered field and enjoyed an early dinner with my wife, safe from the madness of the roads within our cocoon of snow.
Today, I am staying home as the roads remain bad and our office is closed.
Today, I just might take another walk in time.
