Monday, February 11, 2013

WINTER WONDERLAND REDUX

Got up early Saturday after the snow stopped to shovel. My favorite moment in winter is the morning after a snowstorm when the world is white and the sound muffled, what little there is of it since almost no one is out. There were puffs of white clouds in the kind of blue sky I moved back East to experience again.

We only got about a foot, but the snowplow pushed it to a few more behind my car and with the help of some neighbors we dug it out. The whole day seemed magical, like a Christmas card come to life. And Sunday was even better, the white still outlining tree branches and covering everything but some sidewalks and streets, the sky eve bluer and not a cloud in sight, as bright as as summer day only pleasantly cool and crisp.

But one of my least favorite things in winter is rain, which started last night and has been on and off since. The snow is still covering most things, and thankfully it wasn't too cold today, but I was settling into a disappointed state with the rain when coming out of a building up in the hills near where I live in Jersey, in the late afternoon, suddenly it was like LORD OF THE RINGS New Zealand with a mist rising from the snow that you could walk through like an all encompassing environmental art piece, an atmosphere that seemed crated just for the pleasure of those who got to experience it.

Anyway, winter days like the past two remind me of when I was a boy and snow was on the ground for most of the season back before climate change from global warming made seasons so erratic. And then I saw this photo of Manhattan after a snowstorm when I was a boy and remembered how visiting the city with my mother after a snowstorm seemed even more magical than back in Jersey. New York in those days seemed truly like a Winter Wonderland.
[I feel bad not knowing who the photographer was to give him credit, if anyone knows...]

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