_ What do you call precipitation that falls like snow and lands like rain? I’m sure that there’s an Inuit word. Possibly ‘Ooblek’. I keep looking for Bartholomew Cubbins...

Whatever the name may be, the stuff is gleefully blanketing Moscow, Idaho as I write. Some frat boy down the lane just side-slipped his jalopy into a telephone pole.

I love this stuff!

_ I taught class yesterday. Halfway through lecture, I looked out the window, where an Eigeresque avalanche was falling from the eves, and started to chortle. The students looked at me like I was nuts.

“I own five pairs of skis, and I intend to use EVERY ONE of them today.”

The smattering of Floridians in the group didn’t look amused.

Real snowstorms are like rogue waves in the ocean, or tornado warnings. They throw everything into chaos, sometimes with heinous results to the unwary or geographically misplaced…. But man, do they ever get your blood pumping!

_ I grew up in Minnesota, and from a young age, was never satiated with snowfall. I remember being deeply impressed with a passage from ‘The Long Winter’ by Laura Ingalls Wilder, where a steam locomotive gets buried in a blizzard. (Apparently, this is not completely apocryphal- see photo).

_ That, for me, was the goods. A winter that couldn’t drown a train was no winter at all

Hinged to this love for uncompromising snow was a disdain for the half-hearted ‘Minnesotans’ who anchored the local news. Most of them seemed to be transplants from Waco, Texas. They’d ooze across the screen, wailing in the face of each glorious Arctic blast. Just take your pick from one of the following…

_ “Spring’s only two months away” (simper-wink-simper)

“I talked to my brother in <Phoenix/LA/Miami/Corpus Christi> last night. He said he’d save a round of golf for me” (simper-wink-simper)

“Nature has no mercy at all.  Nature says, "I'm going to snow.  If you have on a bikini and no snowshoes, that's tough.  I am going to snow anyway." (simper-wink-simper)

_ Wash, rinse, and repeat. This reporter gives a credible performance.

(Actually, I like the third quote… much love to Maya Angelou).

_ I’ve found signs in my character of late that this love for snow in its fierce, boisterous glory is, in fact, a fragile thing.  My pottery studio is unheated, and located 20 meters from the nearest water spigot.  I can’t say that washing 20 tools and my splash pan in a half frozen, crusty bucket really enhances the ceramic experience.

(<--- six months and 50 degrees Fahrenheit of separation)

So- I was starting to pout when we got socked in for the third day in a row. That is, until my sister Amy posted this.

_ Apparently, my nephew Ben (who lives in Seattle where snow is a rare and wondrous thing) was so keyed up to cavort that he ran outside with his mittens, hat, jacket, boots… and no pants.

I must now bow before the primal (dare I say) maleness of embracing nature in such a fashion. Ben is now my role model. Every sloppy, dripping, skid-lined snow day that comes my way, I’ll wake up and resolve to live a little more like Ben.

So- here’s the mucky, fuggy aftermath of an hour-long cruise around the nearby golf-course. Note the inch of rime on the rim of my hat.

_ Of course, I wasn’t smiling as much an hour later, after I'd finished shoveling the stuff.