In Like a Lion...

Well, it's Friday night, and yesterday March arrived kicking and screaming with the first substantial snow storm of the winter.  Leap Day, February 29th, escorted the storm from one month to the next, and we awoke on the morning of March 1st to the winter wonderland we'd been anticipating since early December.

It's been a strange winter with such low snow accumulations as to nudge at the record, though I don't think we actually broke it.  I see winter differently this  year, and I am not sure whether it's simply the lack of snow, but rather the Jeep that has stood at the ready to challenge whatever winter had in store.  Early in December, when we were at Bob's Trees in nearby Galway (NY) buying Christmas trees on a green and sunny day, Katie said to me "It won't snow now because you have the Jeep."  If I still had my little Mazda 3, maybe there'd have been a couple of blizzards by now! (How ego-centric does that sound?!)

Any other year, by this time, the sight of one snow flurry would be enough to have me searching on-line for cheap flights to Florida.  Well, I can't do that this year because I work in Admissions and no one who works in Admissions can take off during our busiest season. My escape from the northeast will have to wait until the summer, when it's warm and beautiful here, and that's when I leave (?)...  So, it's good that a flurry, or even a whole dumping of snow, does not antagonize me in the least.  Not this year, anyway.  Most winters, I can get very grumpy when there's no warmth or sunshine in sight!

Who'd ever think that six or ten inches of snow this late in the winter would be almost welcome.  It makes this unusual winter seem less freakish.  It restores a natural balance in some sense.  It's here for a short time, certainly, and right now, before it hangs around too long, it's fresh, and white, and bright, and makes the world look sparkling clean.  And it's pretty.