Yesterday’s Snow
02/13/2010
Now, I fully understand that falling snow is a totally unremarkable sight for many or most of the people who will read this. It’s only significant because it happens here so rarely. We might get a bit of snow like yesterday’s every five years or so. In the twenty-one years I’ve been living in this area, only once has it snowed enough to cover the ground fully and remain there for a few hours. The last time was around 1995—I can’t remember the year for sure. I actually drove the 30 miles (48km) from my house to Spring Hill College, with at least one or two of my children. I can’t remember now whether I had to go for some work-related reason and used that as an excuse to have child or children see the college grounds covered in snow, or if I went only for that reason. It was truly lovely, and I wish I had some pictures of it.
From my office window, though zoomed in a good bit.
That’s the Jesuit cemetery among those trees. I couldn’t help thinking of the closing of Joyce’s great short story, “The Dead.” (...he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.).
This is a view, also zoomed in, from a window on the west side of the building where my office is:
And this has nothing to do with the snow, which had stopped some hours earlier. As I drove across the Mobile Bay causeway on my way home, I was struck by the desolation of sky and dead sea grasses and water. It was just getting dark; within a couple of minutes after I took this picture it was too dark for my camera, or I would have taken more, from better vantage points.
Just after I took this picture, I observed what I am reasonably sure was, at that moment, the coldest person on the planet. As I got back into my car I noticed on the other side of the road (behind me from the viewpoint of this picture), a young man on a motorcycle. He had stopped for some reason, probably attempting to restore sensation to his hands. I have ridden a motorcycle in cold weather, and you cannot dress warmly enough for it, at least not in anything you’re likely to be able to buy in south Alabama. The temperature was around 35F/2C, not all that cold, but add to that a 50 or 60 miles-per-hour (80-95kmh) wind from the speed of the bike, and the 20mph/30kmh or so wind out of the north, and the fact that you are wearing only a half-length coat of middling weight, a stocking cap, and a pair of gloves, and that you must maintain a position in which your arms and legs are outstretched so as to maximize the effect of the wind, and, especially, that you must maintain a tight grip on two plastic-covered metal bars. He may not have been the coldest person on the planet as determined by instruments, but short of someone plunged into an icy sea I’m quite sure he was among the most miserable. There was nothing I could do for him, so I didn’t feel bad about feeling really good when I got back into my car.
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