Snow Day

There is a ton of snow today. The official NOAA prediction was for 6 to 16 inches. I think we've exceeded that. By a quite lot. And it's still coming down. And blowing. And there seem to be "white outs."

Everything is canceled. If it weren't, you couldn't get there anyway. Route 203, a state highway maintained by the New York State DoT, as I write this, is a snowmobile track running down the middle of the roadway. The few trucks crawling cautiously down the road straddle the middle line. And go very, very slowly. If you wanted to, you could cross-country ski down the middle of this road into town. But why would you do that? The general store closed two months ago. So there's nowhere to stop for coffee. Or hot chocolate. Or anything else.

The snow is great for skiing. You could go skiing, if you could get to the slopes. But, of course, you can't because that requires the use of the roads. So today is a Snow Day. A stay at home day. A fire in the fireplace day. A why won't the dog and cat go out day. A maybe I'll just go back to bed with a book day.

Later, when the snow has stopped and the State has plowed the roads, we will all try to figure out how to move that mountain at the side of the road that blocks entry to and from the driveway. We will wish we had a front loader. We will wish we had a snow blower. We will break the handles on our analog snow shovels. We will talk about how we deserve to be sitting at the turquoise sea.

If you want to understand the growth of the 18th Century United States from the Eastern Seaboard to the interior of this continent, you just look out the window. It doesn't snow like this in England or Holland. This kind of snow, this kind of Nor'easter, is unbelievable. The movement West may have had something to do with the depletion of farmland caused by growing the same crops over and over again, but it was also the weather. Definitely. I cannot imagine this without central heating. I cannot imagine this in an uninsulated log cabin. It's enough to make you pack up all of your family and possessions and head for the setting sun at the first available chance, driving due southwest.

Stay warm, be safe, enjoy.