Shocking, really. This whole place was a landscape of hard, slippery whiteness. Since the beginning of November, we've been under a LOT of snow, and that's good, I think. I asked for it, coming up here. After four "winters" in Iowa (although the winter of 2005/6 was a doozy), I was craving a good, solid freeze. A winter the way I remembered them, growing up. Lo and behold, the trendy thought of the Law of Attraction worked like a charm, and my kids got to play in feet and feet of snow, a maze of tunnels Ben carved out for them in the front yard, sledding, snowballing, the works! The piles of snow on the roadsides are high enough to obscure oncoming vans from view, there has been a consistent foot of hard-packed ice and snow on the unshoveled walkways and roads. There is a catwalk on the way to school, and I noticed that our feet tread at an altitude that reaches a third of the way up the tall fences that flank it. When that thing melts it's going to be CRAZY.

 

Anyhow, yesterday and today have been in the PLUSSES. Incredible. It was +8C yesterday. The sun actually felt warm when you were standing in it. Incredible. Today I looked around me and in the space of about 50 hours or so, the snow piles have gone down almost a foot, most of the streets are bare and I find myself gasping at the speed with which the thaw comes. A week ago, it was snowing steadily. Softly and silently, the world was covered for the last time in awhile, with pre-spring sparkles; those flat, brilliant little mirrors that make even the black roadside ice piles look like they belong in an eight year old's glitter-snow globe on her dresser. It looked as if the white bumpy roads were a fixture. Even though I've been through thirty of these, I still had a hard time wrapping my mind around the possibility of a melt. Seemed like fantasy. I thought for sure the ice piles would take months to slowly whittle away in the sun. Here I am today, struck by this speed of change. The ice in insubstantial, the snow is't snow anymore. It's sort of white, spongy wet stuff full of holes, hard and wet and crumbly. I even saw a spot of brown grass this morning. So fast.

 

Around here, it seems impossible sometimes that there will come a day where you can walk out the front door and NOT wear a coat. You get so used to the smell of snow and the slip of ice and the look of the grey, sleeping trees. Cold hands on frigid steering wheels, shoulders up around ears, not seeing the actual ground for four or five months... and then when the warmth hits, there's this flood of urgency. Green, it its wealth, busts out everywhere. Skin shows, bare arms see the sun, curiously attractive bums show from under thin skirts, before it's actually warm enough for it to be entirely comfortable. Car horns honk and cock rock spills from the radio. People walk fast and Slurpees are bought. Spring, here, is like a gasp of air after you've been scraping and banging under the surface of a frozen lake for a nearly deadly amont of time.  It all comes at once and you barely know what to do with it all.

 

Go for coffee, is what I say. I'll go for coffee and find someone to come with me to look at the bare skin and skirted bums and busting green and sparkling eyes, and marvel at the dramatic change of seasons.