A man can walk into that shed, normally, rather than over it.
I couldn’t tell you how much snow has fallen here in the past week. Tuesday I shoveled more than a foot of fresh snow off my porch; from Thursday to Saturday I shoveled four times, 12 inches, 12 inches, 14 inches, and 5 inches. There was already about a foot on the ground. But the stuff compresses; measuring the snow, I found solid ground 44″ below the snow surface. One way or another, everywhere you look it looks like a photo shoot for a Sibelius album.
The whole area has been without power, phone, or internet; this does not affect me too much, but when I walked into town yesterday there was of course no web access. The general feel is that we’ve had three and a half feet in this storm; definitely less in the valley, though, than on the hills. One local sage waved all of it off, though, saying, “This is nothing. Back in ’92, we had four foot in one storm.”
It has been astonishing. These past few days have been lovely, because the feeling of wonder is a prime phenomenon, one of those irreducibles that make life worth living in itself. I’ve just never seen snow like this before. The flakes were so large they cast shadows. The snow is deep enough to be noticeably blue in it depths. Of course I had to worry about the house collapsing, and I got a ladder out to drag snow off the roof. It was unlikely to happen, but it would have been a real disaster if it did. This was heavy, wet snow, and my cabin was made on the cheap. Trying to walk out was an experience – my snowshoes vanished this winter, so I am without them – it probably took thirty minutes to walk the thousand feet to the road. I was waist-deep in snow.
This window is 6 feet high, and the snow is a foot above the base of this window.
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