Snowflake Meditations

The last time I saw my father he was going on about how the most dramatic thing on television these days was the weather. Having not had a television in years, I had to take his word for it, although, I have no reason to doubt him. If meteorological prophecy mentions snow we can look forward to quiet days because said prophecy is usually spoken in doomsayer tongues. The worst case, as a friend of mine once observed when I snarked about it. So it goes.

Words like dramatic and dynamic were used to describe this latest bit of snow, and it wouldn't have surprised me if demonic and a few other adjectives with ic at the end were thrown in for spice. The scant few inches of powder outside my door got me to think of comedic personally. Still, I was willing to brew some lapsang souchong for my first tea of the day.

I find it interesting how somewhere during February teens to early twenties in quaint 'Merican degrees on the fahrenheit scale is not as biting as in December and early January. Is that the point acclimatization has finally been achieved? Or is it that the air is starting to shift to warmer this side of the equator? It seems a legitimate question, though, the answer might not be overly important.

I opted for fleece over goose-down. The sun was would occasionally peep out from behind the gauze-like haze of the day as soft flakes fell around me. I thought of my daughter, just the other day she sent me a picture of her in her prom dress. She was beautiful, but I still wanted to strongly suggest to her boy and any others to be mindful around her. After all, her daddy lives in a place peppered with many, many mineshaft[!]s-and can you dig it? Go falling down one of those today, you'll still be falling the next, and, it is said, if you listen closely enough, you can hear voices speaking in Mandarin and Cantonese.

Not that I would facilitate a fall down a mineshaft[!]-and can you dig it?-by any means. Oh, no. That would border upon psychotic, and I am amongst the sanest cats I know. 

The last time my daughter was up, she went snowboarding with friends and had a grand time of it. A few days before, Sabina and I had gone snowshoeing up Dry Gulch, where ours' were the only bipedal tracks that had been there in months. It was fantastic, the profound silences and that view of the Citadel. All three of us went for a walkabout under the glowing cyclopean eye of the full moon.

As springtime here in the mountains continues apace, I think of our last snowshoe and my daughter's boarding excursion as the last ones of the season. Certainly, there's more snow up high than last year, but I've heard of what crusty crap it is. Bluebird powder days becoming as rare as hen's teeth.

I thought of how, in two days, Sabina and I will be marking the anniversary of taking possession of the House of Owls and Bats. The day we made it home. Bittersweetly, the bruja would've been turning forty this year. If I believed in such concepts as justice I would be raging against the searing injustice of my friend being snatched away the way she was. I might understand, accept, and even sometimes embrace in a lover's way, the reality of chaos, it does not mean I always enjoy it.

From a vantage point, I could see steam rolling off the Road, chasing vehicles, enshrouding them, and then shooting past. It was surreal. There is magic here that has noting to do with wizards and thunderbolts. A mysticism that whispers through the silence of spring snow, that dances along cloud-filtered sunlight, and manifests in warm dancing flakes. Here is where the fantastic dances upon earthly feet, and, I found myself being reminded of the fact once more for the countless time; I could really be no place else.