The Skyline Newspaper

Photo by Jason Hennington

But where are the snows of yesterweek?

By David Johnson
Skyline Contributor

As you may have noticed, it snowed at the end of last week.

Many of us had a fun time driving back over icy roads, I'm sure, but when we arrived, we discovered as near a winter wonderland as can be expected in West Texas. A few inches of snow on the ground, enough on the tops of cars and ledges to have a decent snowball fight, and a sufficient amount in open spaces for a person to build a snowman, if they had the free time and determination.

As I always understood it, winter was supposed to involve snow. Pictures of a typical winter are always a scene out of a Robert Frost poem, decorations at malls and even inside people's houses have wads of cotton or whatever meant to simulate it, and nearly every comic strip in the newspaper takes advantage of winter for a few months of seasonal snow jokes. Besides the numerous strips it had devoted to building snowmen and sledding down hills, I remember one “Calvin & Hobbes” strip in particular where Calvin stands with his mouth open, trying to catch the first snowflake to fall, which supposedly signals the beginning of winter proper.

For someone who had lived in West Texas his entire life, this was confusing. By the standards of all available media, my home experienced only a few days of winter each year, and pathetic little days they were. The winter of my understanding did not well match the winter of my reality, and I felt disadvantaged somehow because of it.

I once talked to a friend of mine from Wisconsin about an event years ago when it snowed nine and a half inches in my hometown. This remains a notable day to people my age from that town and something they all remember, even now. My friend was unimpressed and didn't understand what the big deal was. For him, snow was a normal part of life, something like taking out the trash or wind-blown dirt might be to me, although it provided more opportunities for play than these. For me to be impressed by a snowfall seemed to him to be silly. He was more pleased to see spring than he missed the melting snow.

In part because of this, I've come to give thanks for my winter poverty. The snow out here is more courteous, when it comes. It visits a few days, then it leaves before we start to think it a nuisance.

The snow is always fresh, even now as I look out at the muddy slush trying to hide in the retreating shade. Wisconsin may get a new layer regularly, but I've never grumbled about having to shovel it off a sidewalk, never even seen it without taking notice.

Snow isn't a chore or a piece of scenery around here, it isn't a part of a routine. It's always something special, just this side of a miracle. Farther south and west, it probably is a miracle.

Monday morning I came outside and found snow on the ground, and I was happy. I looked down on the city and across at the snow-sprinkled mountains, and I was glad. I walked through the parking lot, scooped some snow off a car's hood, and packed it in my hands until they were numb and red, and all was right with the world. Because it was winter, and there was snow.

The snows of the mountains are nearly gone, the snows of the grass are disappearing, the snows of pavement and asphalt are a memory of yesterweek. But a wonderful memory they are, untarnished by resentment, practicality, or even the mundane in the vast expanses of my recollection.