Snow is a force that gives us meaning

As a kid growing up in eastern Oregon I loved snow. No matter how much it snowed, it was never enough for all the skiing, sledding, snowforts, snowball fignts and snowjumping (jumping off of the roof into a big snowpile) which could be dreampt up by my siblings and I. In fifth grade the snow reached over my head, the closest it ever came to my imagined quota. Now, 25 years later, I again find myself in snow country. And once again I want more.

This morning it snowed a couple inches while I stayed inside and fiddled with the new projector that LL and I have decided to treat ourselves to. Now that that is done--as with all projects remotely electronic and/or mechanical, it always take way longer than expected--I am temporarily at a loss for what to do. Not that I don't have any number of things I could/should be doing. But none are as fun as...

Of course! Snow. Outside I go, shovel in hand, to tackle the driveway.

As I push snow my mind relaxes. The task is simple and at hand. The reward is tangible, measurable, satisfying. Even as I clear a path, I wish for more: as long as it snows, I will have something which must be done, just as after finishing the driveway, I have to take LL's rig in for studded tires.

I wonder--not yet having read Chris Hedges's War is a Force...--if our urges toward violence might not be taken out more benignly on snow. We (and by we I mean of course I) have within us (me) the occasional urge, borne of the daily stresses accumulated by living an imperfect life, to destroy something. Snow is beautifully unique in its range of accommodation. Like water it can be hit and pushed without harm to do-er or do-ee, but in a way that water can't it can also be used for creation. In skiing and sledding, the desire for speed, even reckless speed, can be satisfied with yet a soft landing for crashes. In moving snow, there is unfettered access to the physical labor that is so often lacking in our lives. Maybe we all could use a little more snow.

Maybe, too, part of my love affair stems from the sense of something fragile and vanishing. We are in a La Niña year so it's supposed to be colder and wetter. But the numbers implied by global warming do not bode well for snow in the years to come. Snow, at ever-higher latitudes and elevations, may be an endangered species.

In which case, maybe snow could become the icon that finally galvanizes the floundering (or dead, as per the title of Hedges's latest, Death of the Liberal Class) progressive movement into action.

Ok, so that's a stretch. But such recent events as the failure to pass I-1098, which the 98$ of people who DON'T make more than $200k/yr would have benefited from, against a backdrop of huge cuts to essential services in healthcare and education, have me grasping at straws. At fragile and ephemeral things. At snow.

I'll write again when it's over my head. Until then let it snow!