Redefining My Relationship With Snow

When I was little snow was a great plaything. It rarely came to visit and when it did it meant no school and a day of sledding. Sometimes we would go up to the mountains for a fun time visiting the snow. When we moved to California snow became even more removed. It was strictly something one sought out and never did it impose on you when you didn’t want it around.

Then, while snowboarding at age 16, I smashed up my arm right proper and snow and I were on the outs. College somehow led me into the “snowbelt” of western New York where our relationship further deteriorated. Severn or eight months of snow, ice, the cold and gray skies does not work for me - it snowed on my graduation day in mid-May for goodness sake! After college work took me to D.C. briefly and then Philadelphia where I continued to be assaulted by cold, cold snow and ice.

Last May I fled this darkness for sunny California. However, where I live in the foothills of the Sierras, there is the occasional snowstorm and just this last week I had to actually deal with it. Thursday morning roads were a bit snowy and icy and then Friday morning there was so much snow I had to put chains on my little car and drive oh-so-carefully to school. But it wasn’t all that bad. It wasn’t that hard, nothing tragic happened, all was okay and I think it was an important step in asserting myself over the snow. It also helps that it is so beautiful up here (especially compared to dirty Philadelphia), which makes the snow rather breathtaking and fairy tale like. And then there’s bit about there being many bright, sunny beautiful days before and after storms with moments of bright beautifulness even in the midst of a storm. That helps rather a lot.


Saturday was another significant step in redefining my relationship with snow. I actively sought out and played in the snow. Lovely new friend Chris and I went snowshoeing up in the mountains. There were many feet of deep powder going up and down fairly steep slopes so we got quite a workout, but it was quite fun to be playing outside in all the fresh mountain air surrounded by exceptional beauty. Two guys had started about an hour or two ahead of us and broke quite a bit of trail for us. They turned back shortly after we caught up to them but we kept going and worked with a couple of other snowshoeing fools until we finally turned around as well. Even with the teamwork it was a pretty strenuous challenge to break a trail going steeply up-hill in knee or waist-deep snow. It was somewhat Zen though – just one step at a time until we finally got there! It took us two and a half hours to go out and only an hour to get back.

The most amusing part of the day was definitely Samson the Snow Duck. Samson is Chris’ beautiful Labrador/Retriever who is almost three years old and still thoroughly full of Labrador puppy energy. Samson is also totally in love with the snow. All day he was plowing off the trail into powdery snow so deep he would actually be swimming in a porpoise fashion through it. I think of him as a snow duck because we’d toss a snowball for him and in his attempts to find the snowball (which generally dissolved as soon as it hit the snow) he would dive headfirst into the snow and root around with his head down and butt up ala a duck. At times we would throw a snowball ahead of us and let Samson do the initial trail braking. We were a tad bit nervous that he would exhaust himself (is Labrador puppy-energy actually endless, or does it just seem that way?) and he’d have to be carried or dragged back to the car. However, when we didn’t let him lead he would plow along parallel anyway or follow so close behind the leader that he’d step on the back of our shoes and/or get cracked in the head with the show as we stepped. In any case, I think we all had a really good time and slept very well last night!