Patricia Stoltey

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Something About Snowstorms

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By the time you read this, the big snowstorm may have moved into Northern Colorado. I’d be looking forward to it if we hadn’t planned to travel this week. We’ll wait it out through today before canceling anything. Northern Colorado weather doesn’t always do what the forecasters predict.

I love snow. I love to stand at the window with a cup of coffee and watch it fall, love the eerie silence outdoors first thing on a frosty white morning, love to trudge out to the trees and use a broom to knock the heavy stuff off the branches. Shoveling snow? Don’t love that quite as much, but I pitch in and help when necessary.

When I was a kid, a big snow was often an adventure. I lived on a farm in central Illinois where the winds blew huge drifts across the road in front of our house, making it impossible to leave for days. The power would go out as well. We had oil burning stoves in our kitchen and living room, so we kept warm, and my mom could heat water and food there as well. Since we didn’t have a television yet, and personal computers didn’t exist, there wasn’t much left to do but go to bed early. No matter what you’ve read about Abraham Lincoln studying by candlelight, it’s very hard to do once you’re accustomed to electric lights.

One time there was a big storm with high winds, and my dad, mom, younger brother, and I were trying to make it home from town in a car. We got stuck where the snow had blown across the road about a mile from our house. We left the car behind and trudged through the drifts, first stopping at the only house along the way to warm up, then continuing until we made it home. My mother swears I repeatedly wailed, “We’re all going to die out here.”

As I mentioned yesterday, I was once snowed in for a long weekend with a husband and three teenaged boys. This was in town, and we did not lose power, so I spent a lot of the time wearing headphones which were connected to my stereo (no IPods or even Walkmans back then).

That time I was muttering, “We’re all going to die in here.” Those teenagers do not know just how lucky they were that the roads were opened up in three days…

Remember the snowstorm in The Shining? I’m just saying.

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Comments

  1. I’ve been snowed in a few times but with only a husband and male dog. Bad enough. I love the first snow and watching snow fall. Being snowed in, not so much.

  2. I love snowstorms as long as we have electricity. I’ve often stood at my dining room window watching the snow fall and thought “We’ve got food. I don’t need to go anywhere. Let it snow.”

    There won’t be any here until January; our mountains are starting to get it now (which is good, considering the Olympics are here in a few months!)

  4. The snow showed up on schedule during the night. It was lovely outside when I went to get the paper. It’s supposed to keep on snowing all day and more tomorrow, and the wind is starting to pick up now. Tomorrow’s travel plans are not looking good.

    Maybe it’s my Midwestern roots, Jane and Terry, but I’ll take snow season over hurricane season any day. My 11 years in Florida included a few very stressful summers.

    Time to get another cup of coffee and watch the snow fall….

  6. I love looking at snow. I don’t particularly enjoy being in it! I don’t like being cold. But I live in Albuquerque, NM, so it’s perfect. I can look at the mountains and see the snow, but here in the city (5000 ft) if it snows, it doesn’t stay long.
    Karen

  7. I’m with you on the beauty of the snow, especially if you can enjoy it from inside with a warm drink in your hand. I am supposed to travel today, so I am less enthralled with today’s storm as I might otherwise be.