Blizzard

Snow’s over, and we’re left with the predicted foot-and-a-half. 

Blizzards have no soundtrack. The whistle of wind, the scraping of shovels, the drone of snow plows and the crunch of rock salt beneath tires and boots echo in the aftermath. Traffic stops. People are absent. The crows and hawks and geese are silent. 

George makes the first tracks in the yard, blacker than black against the white. He ventures out back (the door barely opened!), shocked to sink shoulder-high in drifts. Habit guides him to the now-submerged steps on the side of the deck, and leads him down to the white blanket that is the lawn.

He is a mini-plow, cutting a swath across the yard and around its periphery. He follows his snout, sniffing hungrily but unsuccessfully for familiar smells, searching for favorite bushes and leaf piles. But the snow muffles everything: sights, sounds and scents. In vain, George burrows his face deep in clean mounds, hunting for some trace of recognizable smell, and emerges, his face bathed in winter's icing. In his thick double-coat, he shrugs off the cold, but amidst the uninterrupted white he is disoriented, unable to pinpoint the spot where he pees.

Blizzards turn the world upside down.

The night before the storm, F. came home in a panic with a dozen gallons of bottled water and groceries we didn’t need. As the snow fell, R. called to say she’d spent twice her weekly allowance on groceries (and needed more money) because she was worried about being snowed in. And E. groused around all afternoon, anticipating a night stuck at home, unwilling to consider traveling anywhere by foot.

Soon, George and I will hit the trails, and I will bask in the frozen silence. He will flop onto his back and wriggle in the whiteness. And I, the master, will wait for him to lead me through the woods.