Sun on snow
I have about a thousand things I could write today. But they’ll have to wait for this evening (well, not all thousand of them, but I plan to tackle one or two) because I have some other tasks to do first.
But I just wanted to say, looking outside (which is where I’m about to go in a couple of minutes), that there’s something about winter sun on winter snow up north that is almost inexpressibly lovely. Those of you who live in southern climes may think me mad, but winter is one of the most beautiful seasons of the year.
We who live where the winter is long know that the worst thing about it is usually the early darkness—that, and driving in an ice storm. Luckily where I live we haven’t had too many of those this year.
There’s something about a cold day when the air is sharp and the sun is out that can banish the winter blues. That is, if you’re dressed warmly enough: long underwear, waterproof mittens, scarf, earmuff, and sometimes one of those helmet thingees with a face mask made of specially insulating material. But today that last item won’t be needed.
TOTALLY agree!
We just moved to Spokane (from California) two months ago. I had my first white Christmas ever. Which melted away a few days later.
…yesterday we got our first real storm though (there’s 10 inches, maybe, out my home office window), and the snow-laden trees, the sparklingly crisp air, and the …the everything …is just lovely.
Just right.
Today is a Good Day.
I also agree. Snow also covers up junky stuff, dead trees and bushes, etc. Everything looks clean and fresh.
I spent the first half of my life in rural NE before moving to the Sun Belt. In NE I spent a lot of time outside: winter, spring, summer, or fall.
The NE landscapes that are most deeply embedded in my mind are those of winter. There is nothing more beautiful to me than a starlit sky with a full moon shining on the snow. I am simultaneously connected with beauty and with infinity.
I once read a memoir of a former neighbor who also discussed his love of winter landscapes. It was interesting that he also focused on the darker time of day- though he went for sunsets, not for night time.
A winter sunrise is also something to behold.
Speaking of winter, here is Buffy St. Marie singing Winter Boy.
I particularly like that sort of weather when it snows a lot one day, and after the front passes and you get a brutal temperature drop overnight well into the negative numbers.
If you go out the next morning, the snow squeaks when you step in it. And if you are out in the country and listen carefully, you’ll be amazed at how quiet nature is. All the critters seem to be tucked away, trying to stay warm.
I don’t think you’re mad at all, even though, or maybe because, I live on the Gulf coast where the temperature rarely gets below freezing and snow is a once-in-20-years phenomenon that only lasts a few hours. I grew up somewhat farther north where we would occasionally get a good snow and I really miss it.
Especially if you don’t have to go out in that weather and clear a walk way/drive way. That’s the part that makes me snarly.
Here in Colorado you have cold, crisp days following a snowfall where the sun is blazing, the blue sky is brilliant, and a breeze blows bits of snow around so that it appears that you’re surrounded by glitter. Love it!
It has been a glorious day like that here in northern Minnesota. Awoke to a temperature of -21 degrees. When the sun came up the sky was clear blue. The snow crunches under foot. No human tracks except mine, but tracks of deer, fox, and wolf. And so quiet except the for the occasional booming from the ice on the lake when it cracks as it contracts with the cold. I find it hard to understand those who head south for the winter.
The only downer is the light snowfall this winter, making it hard to get enough snow for the snow sculpture festival.
It is a lovely sight.
Here in Virginia we get to enjoy the beauty of it a few times a year; and then it goes away, usually before it over stays its welcome.
I will say that as a native Floridian I used to wonder why all of those Snowbirds didn’t just stay home. Now, as I fast approach my dotage I begin to understand just how much energy it takes to cope; and how the cold cuts through to older bones.
Robert Frost—one of my very favorite poets—wrote one very famous poem featuring snow: “Stopping By Woods On a Snowy Evening.”
But here are some less famous ones you might enjoy:
Here’s an offering from Frost in one of his much darker moods:
I think the latter is an exceptionally fine poem. It fulfills that strange function poetry sometimes has: to describe a mood that’s deeply dark and disturbing, and yet to do it with such beauty and insight, so many unique and lovely and moving images, that some sort of transcendence occurs despite the gloom.
It doesn’t really offer any comfort; it’s a very bleak vision, after all. But the lines, somber and even frightening as they are, have their own sort of solace, saying, “Others have had this fear, others have passed this way too.”
One of my absolute FAVORITE things is waking up on a bright sunny Colorado morning after a major snow storm, when the temperature is about ten degrees, the snow is like sugar, there’s not a breath of wind, and everything is covered in a bright white blanket. Sometimes the trees are covered in whorefrost. There’s something very special about it.
It’s all in the repositioning of blues.
Some say that snow is sleep. I say
That snow is but the rest
Of clouds upon earth’s surface laid
To soothe the forest’s breast,
To calm the souls that linger there
Beneath an age of leaf
That hides within it’s brindle flesh
Whole galaxies of seed.
Some say that snow is chill. I say
That snow is but a shawl
Draped over stones of silence,
That such silence shelter all.
And in such silence seal within
The brook beneath the glass,
That when the spring shall set it free
All dreams to sea shall pass.
Some say that snow is death. I say
That snow is but the prayer
Said when soul in winter’s glade
Calls the body from its lair,
To stand within the last of light,
Becoming less than air,
To leave behind what came before
In the shadows dawn prepares.
I’ve always liked winter and snow. True, I live in an area where we don’t get very many winter storms, but even now that I’m older and have to deal with shoveling the driveway in order to get to work, it’s still not so bad. It’s better than the summer when I have to mow the lawn and trim the bushes all the time. At least in winter I only have to do snow removal occasionally.
We’ve had a very mild winter so far, with only a few sprinklings of flurries. Tonight we may get some snow, or maybe freezing rain. Friday night into Saturday morning is the absolute best time for a snowstorm, since I, along with the road crews, have the whole weekend to get things back into shape for the start of the workweek on Monday.
(Yes, this comment was rather pedestrian and prosaic after the nice poems by Frost and Vanderleun, but I just wanted to chime in saying: I like snow.)
I like snow too, and we have had precious little of it so far here in usually-snowy upstate NY. But just now we came in from an evening out in the six-degree night, with just enough snow covering the ground at last to turn the night pearly under the winter stars. It’s so cold out that the snow squeaks underfoot — not much like this, my favorite snow poem:
Velvet Shoes
Let us walk in the white snow
In a soundless space;
With footsteps quiet and slow,
At a tranquil pace,
Under veils of white lace.
I shall go shod in silk,
And you in wool,
White as white cow’s milk,
More beautiful
Than the breast of a gull.
We shall walk through the still town
In a windless peace;
We shall step upon white down,
Upon silver fleece,
Upon softer than these.
We shall walk in velvet shoes:
Wherever we go
Silence will fall like dews
On white silence below.
We shall walk in the snow.
Elinor Wylie
Winter in the mountains outside Butte, Mt. It was 1949 and I was not quite 6 years old, waddling about in my Southpark/mini-sumo wrestler snow suit. At noon, the sun was barely above the horizon. The sky was almost purple. The Light! Golden rays you could almost touch, rendering the exposed snow on fire and the shaded snow blue, the fir trees the most vivid green. The silence! The only sound was the crunch of my family’s footsteps. Not a breath of wind. The magic came to an end when my dad spotted the bobcat tracks.
A brilliant, cobalt-blue day with ice like diamonds….
This is a good place to leave a little lagniappe: here are two fellows from London’s Globe Theatre giving us a taste of how Wm. Shakespeare sounded, in the accent of Elizabethan English. Listen to this to hear how Shakespeare and co. spoke 400 years agone. . . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s
The Globe has done two productions in “O.P.”: Old Pronunciation.
The Crystals, pere et fils, reveal some fascinating discoveries they made when they started reading the Divine William in his own accents. Enjoy!
Much of the allure is the result of the low sun angle, making most of the day like summer sunrises and sunsets. The shadows bring out beauty.