Musings

I walked home from yoga through the snow this morning. It was beautiful. It's finally starting to feel like winter, rather than just bitter cold with nothing but dry skin to show for it. It might have been the zen-like trance that settles over you after practicing yoga, but I really think it is the serenity and the silence of fat fluffy flakes landing on your hat, on your mittens, and in your eyelashes. It feels like it's been a long time since I've really been somewhere with snow. This is definitely the first time since high school I've spent a whole, real winter somewhere. The slush and freezing rain of Philadelphia never fulfilled my yen for real snow, and winter breaks in Maine never seemed to be enough.

Snow is somehow utterly nostalgic and yet always new, always fresh. You never see the same snow twice, but it's like an old friend you haven't seen in months or years. Comforting, yet approached with trepidation, until you've made your peace with it and arrived back at your infinite and unchanging relationship with the snow; a snowball fight, a snow angel, a donut in a parking lot, standing outside with your mouth open wide, curled up by the fire with a mug of hot chocolate listening to the blizzard, or not until the day after when fresh powder covers the mountain and your patience has finally paid off.

This is the excitement in the air when the snow comes. Snow is the ghost of winters past, present, and future. Always different, yet always the same.