This morning, as I write, the snow has stopped. At my house the snowfall measured eight and a half inches. I see that nearby, folks encountered twelve inches, even up to sixteen. That’s a decent enough number here in coastal New England. We’ve seen much more, now and then, but 16 will definitely do, It covers the trash barrels, buries the back yard snowman up to his armpits, forces the dog to traipse much too carefully, as dogs do not like to do. It falls off the branches and — if you’re not careful — onto the back of your neck, melting down the back of your undershirt.

The roads, however, are clear. as the temperature rises toward 40, melting changes snow to squish. If it were veggies, you’d cook up a hearty stew of it — that squishy is it under foot and in your hands as you try to make snowballs of it — much too wet ! But back to the roads. They’re wet and clear, and I have places to go, one of which was to the computer at which I am typing now, in the nearby public library because all I have is an iPhone. No tablets for me, no iPad, no PC. Turns out the library opened an hour late and is almost empty of readers. Perhaps they’rte reading at home — or still shoveling out. Myself, I started shoveling at 7.30 and made the driveway all beautifully driveable by 9.00. Then coffee at Starbucks, of course, and a cookie — because I can. There I watched the snow stop and the clouds lift just enough that I could see their contours, no longer a foggy mass of moist grey. I imagine Robert Frost planning the sleigh drive that, in the coming evening, found him stopping by the woods.

There’s woods near where I am typing, but they don’t surround. Not since i was a kid have the local woods sprawled over enough acreage that, once within them, you could not see their lend. In those days the snow was thicker, too, and it did not stop when you hoped it would. It kept on coming at you, as if to fill the entire wood deeply enough that you would need skis to traverse them. You could do that then. There were fewer roads through the woods, and those that did exist were rarely plowed. You put chains on your tires and you slashed through the snow, keeping to the road guided by the orange-tipped poles wise wood-keepers placed along the road sides. You needed them, because if you drove the woods you were more often than not the only driver on the road, and but for those tipped orange sticks there was no way to follow the road-bed. No tire tracks ahead of you and only yours behind. It was a partnership, you might say, the snow and you.

I am in the city with this snow. No partnership there, just the snow, begging, like a Golden retriever hungry, for some loving attention — which it will not get from any of the dozens of drivers hurrying along the salted clear highways and the snow-plowed side streets along which residents are still shoveling and snow-blowing their pathways from there to the job they must go to — because unlike school, jobs rarely send out a “stay home” text. The snow doesn’t know what to do with busy people. It wants attention, which means time out from the busy. It doesn’t get much attention. Perhaps I should give it some ? But I did. I attended to it by shoveling it out of my way. I suppose that was rude of me, but I’m no different from anyone else in the city, a place that’s about work, not snow. Fortunately for the snow, the kids differ. From them the snow can get attention. Kids don’t only love dogs, they love snow. You can’t pet snow, or rub its ears, but you can roll in it and laugh as it hugs you. Woof.

—- Mike Freedberg / Here and Sphere