Translucency
12:13 PM, Inside the snow cave it was crystal quiet. Breathing created a sorcerous mist that swirled and vanished before your eyes, melting the innermost layer of the cave to a blue-white translucency. The cold was…gentle, more a suggestion, a reminder, than an actual chill. Perhaps the Winter Queen’s icy palace was like this.
We’d made the cave by shoveling the driveway and piling the snow up over a garbage can. After much packing and patting with our gloved hands, we carefully pulled the garbage can free — leaving a mysterious snow-blue cavern, prime for exploration and frosted fantasies.
I remember playing for hours with my brothers and friends in the snow. Playing until ice crusted the cuffs of our gloves and the yarns of our tousle-caps. Playing until our coats and pants were uniformly damp and our noses ran constantly. Snotsicles, don’t you know? I remember the thwack of snowballs, the rush and rattle of sledding, and the bright taste of icicles snapped from the eaves of snowy houses.
The last few Winters in Pittsburgh have been mild, very little snow to speak of. A year ago, I didn’t even have to break out the snow shovel at all. Today is crisp and perfect, under a faultless wide blue sky. You could almost fool yourself into thinking that the tulips and daffodils are starting to poke out of the ground.
But it is the last month of the year and Winter, though it is being quite courtly at the moment, is soon to come. I know that many people have favorites, but I can honestly say that I enjoy all four seasons. And I’ve always appreciated Winter — whether it be clear, cold and snowless or warmer, mounded in glittering drifts and awash in tumbling flakes. Winter, like the other seasons, carries its own enchantment. Memories and experiences pile up around it.
I guess that, if you stretch things a bit, you could say that every month has its own charms, every day its distinct character, every hour its unique tone. Every moment has its own magic.
Happy December.
— JWR, 12/1/98