One Winter Night

I don't miss living where it snows. I realize to the tart that might be sacrilige, but I don't care. It was always slick, cold and after the novelty of the first snow wore off and all you were left with was dry, crusty sheets of snow followed by feet of mud, there is nothing about it to love.

But one winter night I almost changed my mind. I must have been 15 years old, because I wasn't driving at the time. The sky unloaded a foot or so of snow while I was at basketball practice and my ride home, Danny, only had a little S-10 pickup. It did alright in the rest of the snow on the flatness of the road but our driveway imposed another problem. It was roughly half a mile long and as you turned off the road and to the ranch's access you had to climb a small hill with a fairly steep grade. Danny apologized as he dropped me off at the foot of the driveway, but we both knew there was no way in hell that little pickup would climb the 100 yards or so up the hill. I wasn't surprised; this was life when it snowed big. This was one of the reasons I hated snow.

The slick soles of my cowboy boots made it damn near impossible to climb that bit of hill. I would have probably been better off in my basketball shoes but I left them at the gym. My letterman's jacket felt thin compared to the thick winter blackness. If I could make it to one of the junipers that sat near the irrigation ditch I would be fine. From there I could walk through the brush where the snow wasn't packed down by my father's pickup and the tractor then turned into ice.

I fought way up the hill, trying not fall on my ass, drop my bookbag or slide to the bottom of the driveway. I realize it's not quite an epic battle, but at the time that hill was that was between me and a half mile walk to a wood stove and a warm dinner. I cursed the hill and the snow and winter and the coach for not cancelling practice. I remembered all the reasons I hated winter and snow and why I was moving to Arizona once I graduated from high school.

After I made it to the top of the hill I stopped to catch my breath. The coat that felt too thin now weighed on my shoulders like an old dog. I looked around. Through the thin clouds I could make out a silvery thumbnail sliver of the moon on its way to becoming bigger and brighter. Though just a sliver, it was just enough to light up the white around me. All of the white. The snow sat in heavy pillows on the juniper branches and brush to create a cloudlike wonderland in the dark. Nothing was as I remembered it. Every tree, rock and bush was buried while the fence posts struggled to stand taller than the white drifts. The silence was heavier than the snow and shushed the chained tires beating their way on the snow-packed road and muffling the cry of a mother cow calling for her calf. Everything felt heavy- the silence, the snow, my frozen toes in the toes of my boots- everything. In that moment I loved where I was at. It was just me and the snow and the silence and I was okay with that. I didn't want to walk home. I wanted to stay mounds of snow and live my life in the lumpy white dreamscape. It was okay to die at that moment. I couldn't imagine the snow being more perfect than that.