It’s past mid-April. We all are straining toward warmer weather, even me—and I love Winter, as I think I’ve told you. Sometimes we get a blizzard, a foot or more of snow at this time of year. It’s messy, after the ground has started to thaw, and ploughing it is parlous. But I welcome it as a last chance on my XC skis.
But this year, at the end of a winter in the metaphorical as well as literal sense, even I’m ready for spring. Willing it.
But I wake every morning to see that my Lord Winter has left a token of his affection, a reminder of his continued residence: a confectioners’ sugar dusting of snow, or a cold wind.
This morning, a cold, insistent rain was falling from a leaden sky. After my walk I left my dripping coat draped over a chair on the porch.
But this afternoon: sunshine, and large silver-blue scudding clouds. And snow! Magical snow, not in flakes but in small pearls, round like hail but falling more slowly and silently than hail would have done. I looked toward the East: is there such a thing as a “snowbow”? The grass is already green. It felt like…the miracle of the fleece, or sump’n.
“Into many a green valley/Drifts the appalling snow” Auden wrote in As I Walked Out One Evening. He was using “snow” there to symbolize a blight, a withering, I don’t see snow that way, usually.
But, just this season, I see it: Winter will not let us go. The immobility, the isolation. Here am I still! he says, sprinkling his bright ephemeral largesse, emitting his crystalline breath.. you will not refuse me, you have not tired of me….you dare not!
No. We dare not. We will wait, we must wait.
Will Summer spread her warm arms, offer her strawberry lips, to us this curséd year?
ST UnWoked & UnVaxxed! 
Beautiful, Hypatia, thank you 🙂
I am intrigued by the weather you describe in Northeast PA. You are south of me, and I always just kind of assumed that it got warmer the farther south you go? In Western Ma, we get snow in April once in a blue moon-it actually happened the other day, but it’s very rare. Waking up to even a light dusting of snow does not happen in April here very often, so I am intrigued that it does happen further south in PA. 🙂
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It could be the elevation. We’re on a plateau here, about 1900 feet.
My sister lives in Warwick Ma. Walking around with her, I was struck by the sandy soil. It looks like a beach!
I’m worried about her now; the murrain seems to be raging thru Mass…you and your mom stay safe!
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Thank you! 🙂
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NWPA today; Rain, peekaboo sunshine, hail, and a micro-blizzard from wind and snow, while my sis was coming to give me a hand, in late afternoon….Mother Nature has Peculiar Meteorological Syndrome (PMS) today here.
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Oh, I also love winters and mild summers. Here in India, summers are very harsh. Due to global warming, average temperatures have gone up 3 to 4 degrees in the last 20 years. A couple of years back, I was in Belgium, and they told me that they were using fans for the first time in their country.
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Well, Sando all I’m saying is: we could use a li’l global warming here in the Northeast US!
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ST Unleashed! GMF of the Week: “Peculiar Meteorological Syndrome (PMS)”
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I love a clear, crips mountain morning but these days I only want to see snow when it is under my (Alpine/ downhill) skis.
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XC reminds me too much of work.
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When I woke up this morning, it was sunny outside, and looked very nice. So being optimistic, I put on my flip flops to go out and check the mail: it was freezing cold, windy, and there were SNOWFLAKES flying around. So ready for this to be over
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