Snow Day

It doesn’t snow here much. When it does things slow down, but first people spring into action, crowding the Piggly Wiggly across the railroad tracks as they gather milk, bread, and cords of firewood in red plastic mesh against the impending storm. The Atlanta radio stations speak seriously and portentously of ‘winter storm watch 08’ and of ‘extreme weather events.’ We get up early and check websites and the bottoms of tv screens for school closings. There’s an air of goofy festivity in the air, a celebratory bundling and battening down that can feel pretty ridiculous but is still fun. (Sometimes of course we have ice storms and then we lose electricity and the roads really do become dangerous. I do like to have plenty of firewood on hand for those. I can stay pretty warm here between the fireplace upstairs and the woodstove downstairs. It’s fun to hang out beside a hurricane lamp and read for hours with the world stopped outside.) at any rate, this last snow day was actually a Saturday. I was supposed to have a late breakfast with a friend down in Roswell and had to cancel. The snow came down steady for several hours and things were caked and limned in white. I went downtown to the little coffee shop where I often grade papers on Saturday mornings and watched the cook and waitress engage in something like a snowball fight as they slung palmfuls of quickly melting slush at each other. The snow was really almost a sheet by the time I left the coffee shop and I made the obligatory firewood stop at the grocery store on the way home, elbowing my way past citizens desperately clutching their loaf bread and bottled water and eyeing the skies nervously. When I got home I built a fire, lit some incense, tossed some juniper needles into the fire to make it smell good, and made myself some hot tea. When the snow slowed down I went outside and took some pictures. I liked how the magnolia pods and pine needles held the snow and realized I hadn’t really noticed this in past years. I think taking pictures has made me see these smallnesses in a way that I never have before, especially with regard to season and weather. The snow melted pretty quickly that Saturday, with only a fine crystalskein of ice hanging around till the next day, but it was fun while it lasted.