First snow

November 23rd

Rather unexpectedly, this morning I woke up to the first snow of the season. In the forecast, there was only a call for rain, but I guess temperature around zero was enough for the snowfall. This is still only a weak and feeble attempt from the upcoming winter — this snow will be gone by tomorrow and is already slushed and mostly wet annoyance.

Nonetheless — it was a pretty sight this morning with a white and wet cover over gray autumn ground and leafless trees. I like it (except for driving of course, and I haven’t even changed for the winter tires on my car yet…) — this seasonal change in a place where I live that has four distinct seasons a year. Well, there will be more work with shoveling snow and getting snow off the car and wearing all the layers and hats and gloves and scarfs and gifts for Christmas and short days and long nights and hot tea all day and cold wind in a face and thick, wooly socks and drying of shoes and boots after each trip outside — and I don’t mind at all.

And snow has also two special, magical properties:

• it muffles sound, every sound in winter to me sounds like from behind a foggy curtain, it is less sharp, more distant. Except in the forest — then the snow amplifies the sound and I can hear everything there with much more clarity.
• it covers this grayish-brownish, decaying ground with all the natural or human-made garbage on it. For a while, we get another layer over our ground level (which is quite remarkable in a way). For a while, snow makes it prettier.

And when there is more snow — there will be a possibility to make snow angels! Maybe even a snowman!