Snow falls:
years of anger following
hours that float idly down —
the blizzard
drifts its weight
deeper and deeper for three days
or sixty years, eh? Then
the sun! a clutter of
yellow and blue flakes —
Hairy looking trees stand out
in long alleys
over a wild solitude.
The man turns and there —
his solitary track stretched out
upon the world.
William Carlos Williams, Blizzard
Snow is in the forecast for Humptulips County for the first time this year. The forecast is uncertain; the foretold amount, if any, less than an inch.
It’s early morning on the promised day. The promise is for late evening, a time when I, in my eagerness, will be tormented by choice. To learn the truth of the forecast, I can either peer out of our library’s windows at tomorrow’s first light to see if our fields are whited and pristine, or I can advance cautiously to our front porch from time to time during this evening’s hours to search for snowflakes. I will likely opt for the latter, since I am anxious.
In the context of my preferences, truth must gently fall from the sky. Given the odds of the forecast, I must admit to the possibility of an alternate truth: that of a cold wintry evening without snow. But that truth does not figure in my expectations, and by their measure it would prove to be a falsehood. For I want and need the snow to fall, whether in miniscule quantities, if only for a moment, or just as a single flake. Nothing less will do.
It is late in the year. Years are not measured by humans in terms of the earth’s passage around the sun, but by the sum of our experience during that passage. Some years are notable for momentous events; others are memorable only for being one in a string of years labeled “youth” or ” when I was in school” or “when the kids were small” or “the years following my ____ (fill in the blank with the relevant calamity).” This year will be remembered by most of us as an anxious time, but one we all know to possess the human quality of “importance.” Its true and accurate label is yet to be attached and none of those now living can yet be certain what it will say, only that the drafting of its pithy summation must be left to future historians.
So I am anxious and in need of a pinch of magic to restore my equilibrium. I have a vision of Mother Nature as Tinker Bell, flitting here and there to sprinkle fairy dust upon the landscape with the goal of having my secret, unshared wishes come true, no matter how improbable they may be of attainment. While the inner, small child will be satisfied with nothing less than a fire burst of magic, the old man will be content with just a light dusting of powdered sugar on the crust of his experience – for he knows that the track of its gathering will show up more clearly in the snow.
