First Snow of the "Dark Winter"

I went out for a walk at Glenwood Cemetery this morning before work.  It is important to get out these days.  I would have gone anyway (I need the steps) but we are having our first snowstorm and It was worth taking a moment to greet it.  Snow makes things quiet.  It reminds us that in the end nature will prevail over we fragile mortals.  It also, of course, alters the landscape and makes old visions new.  Now that I am not moving around as much as before, these changes in the neighborhood are even more worth marking.

Also--and this is important as well--I knew that there wouldn't be that many people out.  Even in the pandemic, snow and rain keep the numbers down so the suburban outdoors feels bigger than it usually does.  On my way over to visit the Algers (former denizens of the parsonage), I did pass the time of day with one neighbor and her dog.  That was good, too.  I made a video of the Algers in their current situation.  Sometimes cemeteries are just pretty, even around Halloween.

I greet the snow with ambiguous feelings every year.  I don't like to drive in it.  I don't like to shovel it (a task made harder with my new back).  I also don't like how, when I need to be somewhere, I must begin earlier in order to "gear up."  However, walking is good.  I love walking and this adds a new dimension and a certain magic to the whole endeavor. 

When it is my turn to run a roleplaying game I often start it in winter, because it is so much easier to see the mystical in the mundane.  In the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, snow is a heavy-handed metaphor for the absence of the Divine but I have always seen it the other way.  The simple lines of the familiar make us see the whole environment we move through in a different way.

Anyway, it was a nice distraction to get out and remember that--even as we prepare for a winter of rising infection rates along with social unrest--the snow gives us a gift as well.  amazingly it is still coming down.  It looks like shoveling is in my future at some point.  still, I will enjoy it when I can.