Here comes the snow

Pretty while it lasts, snow-laden trees bend under the weight and thump snow onto the ground during a good blow. Eskimos call snow shaken loose by the wind bluwid. In Scotland when snow mixes with rain it’s called a sneesl. The Scots, which have 421 names for snow, call a large snowflake a skelf. Eskimos call falling snow sparkling in moonlight tlun. Snow brightens the gray of many winter days, and is a puzzle of beauty and geometrical intricacy as it falls to the ground. Photo courtesy of Deidre Kettunen

Parachuting from the sky are thousands upon thousands of snowflakes. Primordial skeletons of early stars, Ancient in their song, Angelic in their falling grace, cathedrals, prisms of light, translucent and slight, they capture small breezes like hobos capture rides on trains to unknown destinations.

When I was young, there could be no better thing than to play in the snow. The neighborhood kids: the Jacobsen’s, the Johnson’s, the Flavell’s, the Hansen’s, the Hagen’s and Larsen’s would make snowmen, lots of snowmen using rocks for buttons, sticks for arms, carrots for noses and colored cloth for scarves when we could get our mothers to give us cloth.

We built snow forts in our yards and burrowed along the high edges and corners of carved banks along streets, making vast tunnels in what turned out to be dangerous territory. No one was hurt, but enough kids in other cold weather towns were killed or injured from snowplows making one last sweep with their heavy plow blades, that caused these types of snow forts to be outlawed.

Thank goodness.

On warm days when the snow was sticky, we would have large snowball fights. I had a good arm. I was small and quick and hard to hit. No one had to ask me more than once to join a snowball fight.

Sliding down Jakey’s Trail or Big Birch was always a keen idea. Wearing our church shoes to school so we could skate down the skinny runs we made behind Grand Marais elementary was also something we looked forward to. Playing tackle football at lunch was a thrilling pastime, although occasionally there would be a bloody nose or black eye. Mine included. Sometimes worse injuries occurred, but nothing serious enough to make us quit playing as long as there was enough snow to land on.

At night, the lights of the ski hill above town beckoned. We would walk the trail that started at the top of 8th Avenue, cross seventh street and hike to the hill’s base, rent skis and ride the tow rope to the top and bomb the hill. Over and over again.

Skating at the town rink in the tourist park was probably my favorite winter activity. When I was eight or nine, on weekends I would skate all day, sometimes clanking my way home to eat a quick lunch (outside) or grab a snack (outside) with my older cousin Johnny and then clank my way back to the rink on the unforgiving tarred streets. Ev Bushman at Gambles had a skate sharpener and he would ask me if I was walking on the street in some kind of concentrated effort to dull my blades. “Guess so,” I would mumble, shrugging my shoulders as my blades became shiny and new again.

Snowflakes glide blissfully across my window, gently touching the pane and leaving a silent unknowable explanation and exaltation, sweet notes pursed with gaiety, carried by gravity and wind.

Snow brightens the dull thud and thwack of the thick, curdling cracking cold. Snow insulates the ground, gives warmth and protection to the partridge and bear. It gives warmth to the person shoveling and a new high-pitched vocabulary to the person who finished shoveling until the snowplow comes by: One. More. Time.

Snow coats and cakes evergreens, wrapping them in a velvet beauty. The frosted pines and spruce make for great pictures but they don’t look that way to a logger who is tasked with cutting them down. Then all of that glistening, gilded snow comes straight down the faller’s back and it makes for a long, wet, cold day in the woods. On those long ago days when I was a young lumberjack—a jack pine savage—I would curse Persephone for eating Hades pomegranate seeds.

Weaving in the black, pirouetting in an elegant dance of grace and might,

Snow moves in a hypnotic trance horizontally across the sky, eventually falling like a child’s wounded dream, alone, bruised and dashed, the snow is scooped up and carried away by the scrapping, rasping, glinting steel blade of a plow.

When I was nine, my father built a real igloo in our front yard. It was big enough so my brother Don and I could stand upright in it. It was strong enough so we could ride our plastic slides down it with no fear of it collapsing. One night John and I asked if we could sleep in the Igloo. My father rigged a light inside so we wouldn’t be afraid of the dark. He filled a grocery store box with snow and pushed it in front of the igloo’s entrance so we would stay warm. As the night grew later, The Big Swede and I talked about the possibility of wolves coming to town. Then there was a discussion about the possibility of bears waking up from hibernation, hungry and angry. And of course there was always the real possibility that there was an abominable snowman nosing his or her way through the neighborhood. The more we thought about the prospects of being fair game for the fair game, we decided to make a break for it and get inside. That night we slept in my single bed, our feet opposite from each other so we could fit. We were pretty proud of ourselves. We had made it outside in the igloo for most of the night. At least until 8:30 p.m.

When we awoke in the morning it had snowed. We looked for wild animal tracks around the igloo and sure enough we found some, although they looked strangely like Orangey, my cat’s tracks. Still, if you looked at them with your head tilted they looked a little bit like a baby abominable snowman’s tracks.

The night comes pouring from a vase. Some arm, some hand, some fingers on that hand holds that gilded golden vase upside down and spills inky blackness and winking stars over the earth. After awhile that arm, that hand, those fingers tighten on that vase and shake it repeatedly until snow falls gently and serenely, and the world looks like it’s in a peaceful, restful, snow globe.

Here comes the snow!