Read me in February, and I’ll probably be in “I’m moving once and for all” mode, but for now, for tonight, for this transcendent moment of winter beauty, it is a true blessing to live in New England.In his classic Mere Christianity, the great Christian author C.S. We have sweltering summers, colorful autumns, snowy winters and springtime of unparalleled rejuvenation. There is nowhere in the world where the four seasons are more pronounced than they are here. ![]() I expect I’ll chuckle at it on my way out tomorrow. I did it, and the snow angel as rendered by a 200-pound man is now in my back yard. Now, the gesture seems a bit empty, but what the heck. Not that I wouldn’t have gotten snow down my back had I done so when the spirit first moved me, but I would still have been close to home enough to have remedied it by a shower. I probably should have done it when I first felt the urge. OK, I did it, and got a bunch of snow down my back, and now I’m moderately uncomfortable. I didn’t, and now as I write this, I felt bad that I didn’t give in. On the way home, I helped shovel out and push a stuck car, and when I got home, I felt tempted to make a snow angel in my back yard. I met a gentleman who worked at The Coat of Arms who had spent a part of his shift preparing a mulled cider for the expected chilly crowd. I met a hale, hearty and vigorous young woman named Jenny whose posse had just returned from making snow angels in Prescott Park. Attendance was strong, and many, like me, had walked downtown to share their assessment of the beauty and bounty that is born of a storm like this. I toddled downtown to The Coat of Arms, a British pub in Portsmouth. Since this particular storm is so beautiful to walk in and so treacherous to drive in, the one has superseded the other, and it is a joy to behold. My apartment is on Maplewood Avenue, and as such I have a window on the world of inter-Portsmouth transportation. It has been a joy to watch the automobile traffic subside and the cross-country skier traffic increase. For the home owner with a bad back and creaking joints, it will intimate past youthful vigor, days when the same stooping and shoveling could result in those same yards of displaced snow, whatever its consistency. Shovels will strike sidewalks and walkways, the one shoveling gratified and encouraged by the ease with which the obstacle is removed.įor the neighborhood boy who clears the paths of elderly neighbors, he will be as a god with the number of walkways he will clear and with the cornucopia of goodwill he will engender. The purest, lightest snow sparkles in the tiniest tendrils of bare trees as they reflect downtown street lamps, and tomorrow my little city by the sea will awake to the blinding reflection of bright sunlight against light, fluffy snow. Schools will close, bosses will fume, and cars will crash. Ice will gird branches and snap them from their parent tree. It will mean skidding, fishtailing and possibly driving off the road. We are apparently due to see a classic nor’easter on Sunday, a snarling low pressure system that will be trapped in the gulf of Maine, dredging moisture from above and below in a counterclockwise maelstrom, and depositing it on our fair shores after dragging it over hundreds of square miles of icy Atlantic ocean. It is nearly windless, which means the snow is falling straight down and not piling into drifts that abut bridges and buildings. In reality, there are probably one or two each year that might possibly compete with this evening’s gentle yet relentless snowfall, but one of the byproducts of aging is a tendency to invoke youthful memories when presented with sudden perfection. Actually I can, but I have to go back to my youth. ![]() I cannot remember a snowstorm as beautiful as the one that is occurring outside my window tonight.
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