Snow Thankful

The landscape last week transformed in a blink from dull November to dazzling winter. Tuesday the kids scored a snow day from school – an occurrence so rare in these parts that it threw us all for a loop.

At first, I was aggravated by this unanticipated day off from school, which came after a three-day weekend and on top of a to-do list already lengthened by two days away the previous week. The kids, of course, were thrilled – both by the bonus day off and by the snow quickly covering the world outside.

As I shuffled my schedule to accommodate work and mom duties, they dug out winter gear and headed out to play. Occasionally I’d glance up from the keyboard, relocated for the day to the dining room table, and catch a glimpse of a sled flying by or a shovel being dragged into the front yard or a snowman taking shape in the frosted-over perennial bed.

It was perfect “snowball snow” – wet, dense, and easy to shape. Soon the kids had figured out that if they started at one end of the yard with a fistful of packed snow and kept rolling, they ended up at the other end with haybale-shaped snow forms nearly as high as they were. Slowly, the yard filled with large snow sculptures.

Try as I did to focus on the tasks staring at me from my computer screen, the fun being had outside was a consistent distraction. There’s something about that first snowfall that calls to my inner child: come out and play! (OK, OK, it’s not just the FIRST snowfall, but the opening act of the season pulls my focus to unravelling.)

Eventually, I gave up and pulled on snow boots, jacket, and mittens to join the fun. I helped the kids roll bigger and bigger snow bales, packing and lifting and piling the wet, heavy snow where they directed. At one edge of the yard, my son built an igloo, heaping snow into a huge mound and hollowing it out from within. My daughters rolled snow, one giant ball at a time, into a circle to create a Stonehenge-looking fort, complete with seats and backrests and an arced door to crawl through for entry.

The temperature dropped that night, freezing the kids’ soft-snow creations into solid forms in the front yard. Since then, they’ve been dusted by flurries, softened by the sun, and refrozen several times.

And the kids have spent hours outside – in both daylight and the pre-dinner darkness of November evenings – careening down our tiny sledding hill, fitting sneakers into old ski bindings to slide around the yard, adding features to their initial snow creations, and joining an epic snowball fight.

Beyond transforming the landscape and providing the kids with endless opportunities for outdoor fun, the snow has helped me to shift more readily toward winter, too.

While much of my work this time of year – and beyond – relates directly to snow and skiing, I have been hesitant lately to embrace the busyness the season brings. I was lamenting the dark and the cold, the arrival of endless early mornings for the next many months, the severe diminishment of downtime.

That all changed as the world transitioned to white last week. I’m ready now. Let it snow. 

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her blog, Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the November 23, 2018 issue of the Littleton Record.

Frightful Weather

Oh, the weather outside is … hardly frightful. Unless you’re trying to operate a cold weather-dependent business, or you actually like snow in winter. In that case, the spring-like weather this December is downright scary. We had a short-lived snowfall last week, which set my kids scrambling to get outside. But the first snowmen of the season have melted into crusty lumps of dirty snow, soggy hats, and wilted carrots. It’s safe to say Jack Frost isn’t nipping any noses lately.

Poor Frosty.

I know there are plenty of people enjoying the balminess, but it’s a major headache for ski areas and other businesses – and their employees – who rely on cold and snow to function. Springtime weather in December means fewer people are skiing, which means fewer ski area employees are receiving paychecks. And if you’re a Nordic ski area or snowmobile-related business, well, you’re plain out of luck.

I know I’m not the only one suffering the no-snow December blues. We East Coast skiers are a hardy bunch. We are eager to ski a strip of manmade snow in the early season, if that’s what our option is. We add as many layers as it takes to combat well-below-zero temperatures, and we learn young to lean into icy gusts of wind, lest we lose our grip on the snow. We are not put off by the hard stuff – blue ice, boiler plate, death cookies; call it what you will, we’ll ski it. Many of us have even resorted to donning refurbished Hefty bags to make skiing in the rain of a January thaw less, well, wet.

But when it’s 34 degrees and pouring rain the first week of December, or when the forecast calls for temperatures pushing 50 two weeks before Christmas, or when all that hard-earned snow-making effort is melting right back into the snow making lake – well, it’s hard on a skier’s psyche.

Each morning, as I sit down with my first cup of coffee and my keyboard, I peer out the window, seeking the distant lights of groomers shining through the darkness of pre-dawn: tiny beacons of hope. When the morning sky brightens, I look for the upward plumes of white along the ski trails at Cannon Mountain, signs that it is cold enough, at least, to make snow.

Most Decembers those manmade snow clouds rise in a steady march up the mountain, as the white stuff is pumped skyward to sift down onto the trails, the lifeblood of early season skiing in the Northeast. This year the snow guns have been shutting down by mid-morning most days, if they are fired up at all. It has been too warm to do much beyond laying down a narrow ribbon of white, building it up on cold nights so that it can survive the persistent onslaught of too-warm weather.

Still, my kids were beyond excited to get on the hill last weekend for their first ski outing of the season. They went to bed with visions of snowflakes pirouetting through their little skier dreams and woke Saturday morning raring to hit the slopes, limited as those slopes are at the moment. Instead of worrying about frozen toes and frostbitten noses, we shed layers as the temperatures climbed, and got a preposterously early start on our goggle tans.

It felt good to be skiing again after a long hiatus, and we’re ready for more: more snow, more skiing, more winter. Alas, the forecast remains more suited to April than December. The snow guns are idle until cooler weather returns. And I might have to dig out a Hefty bag for skiing before I don the down jacket.

Yes, the weather outside is frightful, indeed. 

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the December 11, 2015 edition of the Littleton Record.

First Snow

It was a snow globe kind of morning. We woke to a welcome cover of white across the front yard and big, lazy flakes floating softly to the ground. The season’s first snow.

  

We had a few flurries a couple of weeks ago, which turned the high mountain peaks a dazzling white against a bluebird sky and garnered enough excitement to start the kids begging to ski. But this was the first snow to stick in the yard and cover the grass, and it beckoned us from the warmth of inside to the exhilarating snowy landscape outside.

The kids donned snow pants and boots, mittens, and brightly colored winter hats and dashed into the transformed landscape just beyond the front door for the season’s first shoveling, snow angels, sledding, and snowballs. The dog bolted exuberantly outside to roll in the white, remembering the thrilling chill of snow in fur.

As I followed the kids and their laughter into the yard, I embraced the joy of first snow. The whisper of fat flakes on cheeks and eyelashes as you lay back to sweep snow angels into the cold ground. Footprints crisp against the fluff. Chickadees puffed up against the cold and looking right at home in the snowy branches. The soft thump and accompanying poof of white as a snowball hits its target.

Most of all, the first snow is the promise of wintery fun to come: of snowmen still to be created and fast runs on the sledding hill and (best of all) sweet powder days on skis.

It’s not really winter until it snows. And even if the first snow arrives a month (or more) before the solstice, once the white is on the ground, the warm colors of fall are forgotten, and it is winter in our hearts. The first snow is a joyous and quintessential rite of childhood winters and of the arrival of the best season to all lovers of winter, regardless of age. Welcome, winter. Hello, Jack Frost. Bring on the snow!

Posted by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul