It's snow time!

Deer leap through the snow near our house.

I've been pretty much paralyzed the last three days, ever since it started to snow. As you know if you regularly read this blog, our weather has been abnormally dry. Oregon's Cascade Mountains, though not as dry as California's Sierra Nevadas, had far too little snow, and the summer water situation was beginning to look grim.

No longer. Three days ago a series of storms swept in, bringing heavy snow to the mountains and even the Willamette Valley. In Sisters, it deposited three to four feet—it's difficult to be exact. All that snow was mesmerizing and magical, and we both had a hard time tearing ourselves away from the sight of thick snow pouring down hour after hour after hour. We watched as first one shrub and then another, and then small trees, disappeared under a graceful curve of white crystals.

The whiteness filled our winter-dark rooms with glowing light, and I want to thank whoever it was who designed snow to be white. It could have been made blue, or green, or even brown, I suppose, but someone had their thinking cap on and realized that during winter's darkest days a little reflected light off glistening white snow would be welcome. My little office is filled with light these days, making it a joy to enter.

The neighborhood from our front door.
You can see where we dug a path to the street Saturday morning.

Sisters is used to snow, but amounts like this are rare. We haven't been able to get around to see how the rest of the community is faring, but on our street at least, neighbors with shovels have been moving through the streets, helping one other shovel out paths and driveways. Not every one has been so lucky. The Nugget reports that an elderly couple was found dead in the snow, apparently trying to walk to a residence on an unplowed and "heavily blanketed" driveway. A sad note to an otherwise exciting few days.

This morning the storm moved on, the snow stopped, and the sun came out, producing a blinding and beautiful whiteness. And already, it's starting to melt. The pines, whose branches only a few hours ago held buckets of snow, are now almost bare. Beginning tomorrow at least five days of warming rain will arrive, and with it, chances of flooding.

Coincidentally, an article in today's New York Times titled "The End of Snow?" details the myriad places and ways that the white stuff is disappearing, thanks to climate change. It's depressing and frustrating that so little is being done, and if we could we'd happily share our abundance. Since we can't, we'll celebrate this bountiful gift by going for a walk, and by praying that the rains arrive slowly, enabling the melt to soak into the earth, not flood it.

This icicle over our back door eventually grew
to 42 inches before Ray knocked it down.

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Winter

There is still snow on the ground, left over from the ten inches we received at Christmas. My snow experience was minimal before moving here so I am surprised to see it melting unevenly, turning what was a smooth and crystalline front lawn into a collection of humps and bumps and green-brown holes. It's the same in the forest fields we pass on our daily walk. The snow lies deep in places but not evenly, and the small brown patches that surround each sage or pine or juniper grow broader by the day.

Despite the cold we've managed to walk most days, though we wait for it to warm to at least 25F before setting out. I find, somewhat to my surprise, that I like this dry, cold air and the winter views. Yesterday a herd of eight or ten deer crossed our path and shortly after we heard, then saw, a family of fat quail scrabbling through the underbrush.

The cycle of daily melt and nightly freeze leaves crusty ice edges along the remaining snow, edges that I find irresistible—so much so that I'm compelled to stop frequently and give them a good kick. Sometimes I jump on them. It's amazingly satisfying to see the ice crack into tiny pieces, and I wonder if I'm entering my second childhood. If so, Ray has decided to come along.

He used to stop and wait (and laugh) while I paused to kick and stab the ice with my heel, but now he sometimes joins me—maybe in self defense. Today we spent several long minutes hopping around on a particularly delicious piece of ice, while traffic flowed past. I thought we must look like toddlers stomping in puddles, but it didn't matter. We were having fun.

The sun is still low in the south as we walk and the tall pines cast long dark shadows across the fields. The three volcanos rise snow-covered from the flat plain, looking like giant marshmallows against the pale blue sky. There is silence here and a respite, if we choose to take it, from the worries of the world. It is a good way to spend a winter.