The Snowy Rain of Ice

Never have I seen it ice like this, it covers everything, cars, sidewalks, garbage and snow. Many complain of its dangers, I marvel at its beauty.

The snow appears to be artificial, a plastic covering for a mall Christmas display. Shining with its clear glaze made to make the fake snow gleam like real, but it always falls short. Yet here the snow outside looks identical, especially when it is in billowing stacks on top of post or bushes, as if nature finally imitated the store windows in their attempt to imitate it.

And what is more, it cracks. Everything does. It is just like breaking the ice that freezes over street puddles on cold mornings, but instead of water underneath, there is snow, soft and caving in.

As I walk down fourth east I struggle between the decision to “break” the snow, hear it crack and watch it cave in, or to simply look at its beauty and keep it for other pedestrians passing by. I feel the more noble is to leave it, but every time I crack something, even just a bit, a small tingly of joy runs down my spine, and I have to break more.

Smiling, I am taken back to many wonderful cold mornings as a child. “Oh if this had only happened when we were children,” I think to myself. The children who ran through the neighborhood cracking the ice in every puddle we could find. We would have loved an event like this, an ice-coated snow. We would have run from yard to yard jumping into the “snow-puddles” and relishing the cracking sound as we fell into the soft snow underneath. We likely would have used up all the snow in our yard and ran to the park to do the same.

I can only hope that somewhere in this wide valley there are many, or at least a few, children enjoying it as much as we would have.