The Warming

I am one of those crazy individuals who hopes to live in a Currier and Ives Christmas card from Thanksgiving to Easter.

I love the snow. I love the squeak of it underfoot, the shush of it as it falls, the silence it creates as it absorbs other ambient sounds, the amazing whiteness of it, and the sheer wonder of the perfect individual flakes. I love the way snow makes everything look better...compost piles turn into mini moguls, fence posts into mushrooms, trees into icing confections. All harsh edges are erased and flaws obscured.

Here in Northwest Montana we have enjoyed a long spell of particularly snowy weather. A series of muscular storms covered our little farm with a think blanket of fluffy snow, deep enough to make doing chores a chore, but not so deep that we were housebound. With nearly three feet on the ground and even deeper drifts, I have been in heaven.

And yet my white heaven has turned to hell in just 24 short hours with the arrival of a warming trend that has swirled its way out of Oregon and Washington and turned my winter wonderland into an ugly, slushy mess. Shallow pools of melted snow sit over frozen ground and the sheep's winter quarters have turned into a soupy, poopy mess. Poor babies, they can't seem to find a dry spot unless they lay in their spent hay.

One bright spot in the morass is that it will help with our nearly impassable road (the UPS man got stuck yesterday and uttered a VERY bad word which I heard from nearly 1/4 mile away) and allow us to pick up a load of hay from a local farmer. That should make the sheeps happy.

But as an eternal optomist, I know it will snow again, and the ugliness exposed by the warmth will once again be shrouded in soft, rounded whiteness and I will sigh, happy.