Walking With Snow

I have heard it said that arctic natives have a large number of words for snow, each describing a particular kind of snow. Until this year, I had little idea of how many nuances of snow there were.

We are still on the fifth round of snow, which began in early January. An inch one day was covered by another inch a few days later, covered by four more, then four more.Rain turned ten inches of dry, fluffy snow to six inches of wet snow over two inches of slush. The rain turned to snow, dumping another five inches of dry fluffy on top of that. A warm spell melted the top layer of that, then a deep freeze created a crust that was very thin in some places and able to support the weight of a bassador in other places.

Tuesday morning we woke up to a horrendous storm that dumped another eight inches of dry fluffy snow on top of crust of varying thicknesses on top of six inches of dry snow on top of six inches of crusty snow, on top of two inches of ice. Thursday and Friday it rained. Now we have pretty much every kind except dry and fluffy.

Every time Grace leaps into the white stuff beside the sidewalk, she lands in something different.

I wonder how many words she has for snow.

What The Heck Is That?

Five months have gone by since my most recent post. At long last, something captured my imagination. Before I go into that, however, I'll bring you up to date. Since the middle of October, it has been snowing, off and on. There have been perhaps a grand total of ten days during which there has not been snow covering the ground. This makes Grace very happy. At this time there are about eighteen inches of snow on the ground, accumulating steadily for a month or more. Below zero temperatures have been commonplace. Nobody can remember a winter as brutal as this one.

Anyway, Grace and I were out walking this morning, and we chanced upon a mother and her toddler daughter going to the bus stop. The little girl was dressed in a pink snowsuit, giving her a shape sort of like the Michelin Man. Beneath her hood she had a warm hat with an animal face on her forehead. Usually, when we encounter humans on our walks, Grace gets all happy and her tail wags so vigorously that her whole body wags with it. This time, she had a very different vibe going. She went into a little dance, advancing toward her, growling, then retreating as if nervous. I soon figured out that Grace did not recognize the little pink shape as a human. She continued to dance and growl as I dragged her away. She wouldn't take her eyes off the strange pink creature until it hid behind her mother and Grace couldn't see it any more. Out of sight, out of mind. I understand that phrase much better now.