Blog #3:The Sound of a Snowflake

Saturday, 2/2/13    12:05 pm

Finally, I get to experience my backyard in the daylight (for the purposes of this blog, anyway).  The first thing I notice: The sounds!  Yes, there are actual sounds this week other than traffic noises, since I am not sitting outside in the dark fiddling with my broken porch light.  Specifically speaking, there are real, live actual birds.  They are calling to each other, though I cannot yet spot them in their branches high above my head and to the left, way off in a neighbors' yard.  My inability to spot them may be due to my corrected vision, or to my inability to "see" the little things in nature just yet, as this is my first blog-related foray in the daylight hours. 

I think I will want to work on making my eyes sharper in the coming weeks. It feels strange, as though I have spent an eternity in the dark, and my eyes are only just adjusting to the light.

The second thing I notice is that it's snowing. Still. ( It feels like it hasn't stopped for long here in Pittsburgh for at least a week.)  There's something about a harshly cold landscape that is made more bearable by the falling snow.  I've always thought so, always been a little more willing to put up with the inconveniences of winter temperatures when they are accompanied by such a magical thing as the downy flakes that sprinkle themselves across my eyelashes and cheeks.  I've loved the way the snow quiets everything, too.  Sometimes in the morning before I am fully awake, I can tell it's snowing without getting out of bed, without even opening my eyes, because the sounds of the physical world outside my window are so hushed.  On those mornings, it feels like I've been given a reprieve from everyday life, with its chaotic cacophany of traffic, ambulances, and delivery trucks that parade around my area.

Now, in this backyard, I hear something else, too--at first, I think it is merely snow, plunging in large clumps from a nearby tree's branches.  But then my eyes follow the sound, and eventually I see the tip of my neighbors' shovel, tossing snow over the fence between our properties onto the hillside where the tallest trees sit, dusted with powder.

I do not know why he is doing this, or what surface he is clearing with his shovel.  I wonder what he might think of me if I were to be spotted out here, sitting on a green wooden chair one a deck in the middle of a light snowstorm on a freezing day.  He might be just as curious about me.  But it doesn't much matter why he is doing what he's doing, I suppose.  To me, the snow is a thing to be enjoyed, engaged with, taken in.  A thing to revel in, even.  A bit of magic in a world often seemingly lacking in magic.  To my neighbor, it is a nuisance, something to be moved about, to be carted away from an inconvenient location to a more convenient one.

I am reminded that we are all captured, enraptured by different images and textures in this world.  For some of us, a dusting of snow will do the trick.  For others, a snow-cleared highway or sidewalk.  And how depending on the day, and on our responsibilities in the world at any given time, it could be a bit of both.