The snow needed pushing sooner rather than later. It was powdered, and feather light for now. I didn’t like the stinging cold air, but the mission was to keep the inches shaved. If the weather warmed up the snow would gain weight. No bueno. The last four days my three pairs of boots were on rotation. Two were for gound activity and one pair for the roof should I need to get higher than the rake reached.

Each push, shove, and heave reminded me of white-out parallels.

Every so often I’ll fetch my mother-in-law powdered doughnuts. Little snowballs of sugar which she enjoys. I imagine her juggling them during Spanish class. Maybe she’d powder her nose or drop some in her coffee and pretend they were ice bergs. She’d think of more ways to play I’m sure of it.

My sister put out a picture of her snowy driveway. I wasn’t sure why, but she pointed out the little balls of snow spaced evenly on top of the white plateau. Ping-pong ball apparitions waiting to be gathered like manna.

Then there’s the men’s Wednesday ruck at six a.m. No moonlight. Snow light. Head lamps not needed. When the conversation stopped the insulated forest increased its silence. Even a doe leapt away as if tiptoeing out of a room.

Yesterday I let Archie-of-the-short-legs out to pee. Dog gone; baptized in the wonder of white.

Much of the snow remains virgin, and undisturbed in its purity. There’s something about a fresh covering. The dormancy of nature isn’t in vain after all. This beauty lacks color, but not depth.

“’Come now, let us reason together,’ says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.” Isaish 1:18