"The snow began to fall again, drifting against the windows, politely begging entrance and then falling with disappointment to the ground." ~ Jamie McGuire Beautiful Disaster
The first snow of the season at Fat Hummingbird Farm and it is wild, wicked, and deep. It fell in a 'flukra' - a Scottish word for snow falling in large flakes; then turned to 'kramsno', Swedish for 'press-now' meaning a heavy wet snow you can press together. It came accompanied by an unrelenting wind that buffets the birds mercilessly. What we sometimes think is smoke on the horizon is snow squalls - or 'snorok', a Swedish word meaning snowsmoke. The squalls blow up into the trees making them appear to have a hazy foliage. Or they swirl about the cows in the pasture like cats wrapping themselves about their legs. I find myself constantly looking out of various windows to watch how the undulating shapes of the snowdrifts are being continually re-sculpted by the wind. Or to judge how the birds are faring, desperately clinging to suet cakes or bird feeder, their wings flapping rapidly to keep their precarious place on the icy-slick feeder or tray. Or to pity the cows in our pasture, their backs against the wind, their heads down and determined - the wee calves in the middle of the herd of bulky bodies.
Where we have come from on the West Coast snow is infrequent. And when it does snow, the snow turns ugly rather quickly. The whiteness turns to car exhaust-coloured black and grey. The consistency turns to slush and piles up along the curbs and in driveways creating an urban texture that is unpleasant. The sposh and sludge and slop of citified snow.
I will not romanticize snow here. The farmers in the neighbourhood have had their daily work quadrupled by frozen water, cows and chickens caught in snow up to their chests, and having to feed said cattle more often to keep them warmer. But, despite the inconvenience, the power outages, the slick roads, and the decidedly unimpressed and miserable cows out in the pastures, I realize I have missed snow.
I am not a skier or anything of the ilk that would have me waiting excitedly for snow such that I can get out there and ski, or sled, or snowshoe, or skate or whatever else people do in the snow for 'fun'. No, I have missed the ambiance of snow. The mood, the spirit of snow.
Like in the morning when you wake to a nightfall of snow. Before even looking out the window you know snow has fallen. There is a profound hush. The world inhales and forgets to exhale. It holds its breath. Everything watches - the jackrabbit, the porcupine, the fox shuffling slippered feet across the tops of crystalline drifts.
The bare lines of the trees and the denuded tangles of low brush - the bone yard results of the autumn winds stripping the colour and the leaves - are now accentuated. But drifts of snow in crevasses and along branches, knotted and twisted in plump shapes, re-soften the lines, giving the plants a new foliage to wear. The snow piled at the feet of the trees is peppered with the bedroom slipper tracks of jackrabbits and the sharp pen etchings of bird tracks.
The wind sounds different when there is snow. It speaks differently in this scape. It doesn't carry birdsong or the constant buzz of cicadas or the chortle of the stream like it does in other weather. It carries, instead, the shushing sound of wind polishing snow to an icy glaze. Or it carries the deep moan that sings the cold. Or the sound of my steps crunching - like snapping peanut brittle. Or, as the result of snow piled high and heavy on mere twigs, the sound of the cracking fracture from the tree limb like a leg in a trap.
When colour has been snow (white)-washed, when sound has been muted, when the light is callous and stabbing - bouncing from the stark hoariness, one must look for a distinct kind of beauty, a singular kind. That spare-ness, that simplicity, lays everything exposed. My sight expands. There is nothing to see but the blunt, sheer truth of a thing, of a place.
And if I am lucky, on a snow-wrapped black evening, I may see an owl - more silver than the snow, turn her head and peer. Blink.
* Scottish words for snow, swirling snow, and a child's word for snow.
