Blanked And Blanketed
Snow has a strange way of dulling our senses. Familiar objects are robbed of their shape and color. Sound travels poorly. Nothing smells or feels normal. It’s akin to a dream… can’t run… can’t hear… can’t see… nothing is right. The yard and the road and the ditch and the driveway were impossible to identify individually. It’s all just white. When we left for Seattle last week, my car was a formless hump in a featureless plane. The house was covered in ten inches of snow which softened the roofline. The back yard, so carefully landscaped, was blanketed. The top of the birdbath was just barely visible. Fortunately, all that stuff is capable of surviving a good snowstorm. When we left for the holidays I was a little concerned about the weight on the roof, but beyond that I was confident all would be fine.
Upon return from Montana we found the snow had largely melted away. My car, the house, the yard… all back in their usual shapes and colors. Sometime in the last week all that snow turned into thousands of gallons of water and went… well, somewhere! Our house is fairly well elevated and water generally drains away without much problem. But I know the melting snow must have introduced a huge influx of water into municipal storm drains.
Snow is pretty, but I’m glad we don’t get much here. Life is surreal enough without it.