On October 28, 2011, Etna, New York had its first snowfall of the coming winter, with some of the snow remaining on the ground for a day or two in the higher elevations. By 30 October, the temperature had dropped to 24 degrees in the early morning. Winter’s arrival seems early to me.
Images of past snowfalls come to mind:
A group of some 40 people on a field trip to a village in the Swiss Alps in April 2004. All were participants in a workshop I’d helped to convene, focusing on global decentralization processes. Among the participants were two Zimbabwean men, who had given a paper: one, an older village leader probably in his 60s, was providing information on the effects of decentralization in his home village; the other a young, enthusiastic researcher (named, interestingly, Witness), was providing analysis and developing shared prose appropriate to an academic audience. As we drove along, these two men, who had been reserved and quiet in the workshop, had their first sight of snow. As we alighted from our bus, they were able to touch it for the first time. The older man approached it with some hesitation, the wonder, near-fear, evident on his face; but Witness bounded out of the bus, grabbed a handful of snow, felt its coldness, put it on his face, ran his fingers through the snow on the ground. Soon the two of them were laughing, forming snowballs and throwing them at each other with wild abandon, their faces expressing the pleasure, the joy of a wondrous, new experience.
My husband, son and I, en route to Portland, Oregon from our home in Muscat, Oman, stopping for pleasure in Wengen, Switzerland, in July 1990. The area around our hotel was green with summer pasture—we saw a black and white cow, suspended from a stirrup, hanging under a helicopter, high above our heads (being taken from one pasturage to another!). One day we took a near-vertical train up the beautiful, snow-covered Jungfrau. My 9 year old son, who’d spent his life in Hawaii, Indonesia and Oman at that point, had rarely seen or touched snow. He’d occasionally seen it from afar, on Portland’s two visible, glacier-laden volcanoes, Mt. Hood and Mt. St. Helens, but he didn’t remember ever touching it. He couldn’t wait to escape the confines of transport and buildings. Once outside, he grabbed greedy handfuls and began pelting his father with snowballs, laughing with utter delight and glee. The two of them enthusiastically attacked each other (getting thoroughly wet and even colder in the process), as I gratefully looked on—happy, but also relieved that my son had chosen to pelt his father, rather than me!
In December 1968, heavy with my first child (due in February), visiting my parents’ home in the southwest hills of Portland, Oregon, over Christmas vacation; There was an unusual and heavy snowfall. I had borrowed a strange, grey, quilted jumpsuit—perhaps from my father?—to accommodate my large midriff; and my then-husband and I took out my 10 year old brother’s sled. My brother joined us, all spending hours riding down the sloping driveway and the nearby hilly (and empty) roads. I see myself clearly, balancing on my bulging belly, zooming down the white and icy hills, feeling the cold wind on my face, the exhilaration of speed, the tiny fears and anxieties of mild danger—amplified slightly by concern for my unborn child, but feeling the over-weaning joy of being young and wild and playful and free.
In December 1961, my parents, brother and I, having recently moved to the East side of Portland, Oregon. The snow began to fall, and kept falling, exciting my baby brother and me; we couldn’t wait to get out into it. But it kept falling and falling; and soon we heard on the radio that the schools would be closed the next day. This announcement brought delight to me, always happy to have a day off from high school. But I remember vividly the utter shock on my mother’s face. She’d grown up in Chicago where snow falls routinely. She simply could not believe that a city would shut down with what she considered ‘a few measly inches of snow’. It took her a while to get over it.
Snow remains an exotic experience for me. As a child, in Bloomington, Indiana or Ankara, Turkey, I remember occasional snows, a few times each winter. Later, in Portland or Seattle, its arrival was rarer, stopping all traffic and economic or educational activity, creating city-wide delight if it lasts a day or two, dismay if it lasts longer. But these places do not get the kind of snow we get here—-where once snow falls and coats the earth, the landscape remains white for months on end. Etna doesn’t have the hindrances to normal activity—impassable roads, closed businesses—that paralyze the Pacific Northwest. Local governments, transport systems, businesses and schools are prepared for it; it happens every year.
I don’t really want to go out in it, to get cold; but I still love looking at it from the warmth of a cozy house. Its beauty remains a source of delight. I wonder (and am often asked) how long my fascination with it will last. We’ll see.