The End of Snow

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/02/opinion/climate-angst.html

("The End of Snow")

I have had a very long relationship with snow. 

My first earnings came as a direct result of what winter once was. About 60 years ago I teamed up with Louie the Ugly and Nanook of the North, South, East and West to form a local snow shoveling team. Nanook was a year older and basically twice my size. I was essentially riding his coattails  when we went through the neighborhood offering to clean the newly fallen snow from driveways and sidewalks.  During the biggest storms we were sometimes able to hit up the same residence twice in a single day. And, best of all we split the monies equally, despite my not carrying my weight.

I also owe the cap on my front tooth, the one that is now a slightly different color than the natural teeth that surround it, to the white stuff that once upon a time fell from the sky. In the days of my youth, we would ride our sleds down the roads and avenues of our town, as street cleaning was not what it became later, before it became irrelevant. 

One day I led a train of sleds, all attached, as I maneuvered down Ogden Avenue. Unfortunately, my navigational skills proved somewhat lacking and the curb was unceremoniously introduced to my face. What made matters worse was the car accident my mom had on the way with me to the dentist's office.

Snow is what brought me, my wife and our two young children to the Berkshires where we became attached to the area, and in particular, to a blip of a mountain, where my kids developed a lifelong love of skiing and my wife, always devoted to the cause of others, served as a member of the ski patrol for almost three decades before hanging up her red jacket at the end of last winter. And it is here that we now see the first embers of passion for this sport developing in my daughter's five year old.

So yes, snow and I are old friends. And it bothers me greatly how little I see my friend these days.

When I was in high school I once was sitting in the school library, not paying attention  to my studies, and gazing out the window at the falling snow. I then wrote an essay about the life and passing of a snowflake that melted on the windowsill before me. Even my teacher liked it, which was indeed a rare occurrence for me.

Is there anything more beautiful than a snowstorm at night? I still get a rush of adrenaline when I peer out the window and look at the lights of cars passing by, or the street lights, to see if the storm's intensity persists. And there is unbridled joy when I put on snow boots in the morning and take a step into the snow, hoping its measure reaches above my boot top. I fear my grandchildren, or certainly their children, may never know that feeling.

Or ever get a call at the house that there is no school that day because of the storm.

Or ever earn a penny shoveling snow with Louie the Ugly and Nanook of the North, South, East and West. Or thank Nanook for his generosity.