So the first snow of the season was actually this past Sunday, at least for the mid-Atlantic, but it's snowing right now too and so I figured why not say a few words on it. Snow really is beautiful when it first falls, but becomes almost universally hideous the moment humans interact with it. I am not denying the wonderful joy and purity of things like the snow tunnel or fort and snowball fight, but when a car rolls through and turns snow to slop that quickly accumulates filth, the magic has been pooped on. It's this sort of ultimate contrast between purity and beauty one minute, and filth and depravity the next. Sort of.
As a onetime and now sometime runner, I must say that a run through the snow is a glorious experience. Long distance running can be a rather solitary endeavor as it is. I consider it a sought after solitary. So when you add in temperatures so cold that there is an eerie silence, where the crunch of a foot through snow sounds like Cap'n Crunch inside your head, its a wonderful and humbling moment. This is inevitably more enjoyable at night when the lights of houses are one of the few signs that there is civilization besides you out there. And the signature crunch I described happens only when the temperature teeters around freezing to create an icy/crystalline snow more akin to a massive accumulation of miniscule pieces of hail than the soft powder that gives barren trees their Christmasy allure. There's something glorious in leaving the first indents in fresh snow and then turning back to see now one set of prints. Sometimes I would match my strides in reverse to land in those first marks. Of course, there wasn't really enough snow for that this time, but I'm calling on the past.
And since I've no place to go, let it snow.
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