I know it is unpopular, but I am a lifetime lover of snow. Ideally, I would have donned snow boots and cleats and gone out in last week’s delightful snowfall, but I am 92 now and it probably would have been inadvisable. So I contented myself with looking out at the trees that had grown so much more majestic in their snow coats. They are largely evergreens. The deciduous trees seem to have grown antlers.
There are two towering pines — one at the back door, another in the side yard. On Tiasquam road, the dirt road that passes my West Tisbury house, the cedars that are now white with snow blossoms were a gift from the late Shirley Mayhew. When the house was being built, she offered them as a protection from the half-dozen drivers who go by to get to their homes up the road.
There is also a dogwood outside my kitchen window that is now so full of snow that no limbs are in sight. In summer, my calico cat admires the dogwood blossoms from an upstairs window. Now that it is top-heavy with snow blooms, she seems curiously bemused.
I wish I could be taking a walk along Music street and around the Panhandle, or crunching through the snow in my side yard following animal tracks. Doing so is always an excuse for calling naturalist Gus Ben David. I describe to him what I see and ask if the tracks are of a rabbit, a deer, a chipmunk, a squirrel, a skunk or a rat. He patiently listens to my descriptions and supplies the answers.
I watch black crows sweeping low over snow banks.
Ideally, I would be passing the house of the late Judge Benjamin Bird that sits at an angle to Music street. The story goes that the angle was caused due to the house being moved to its present site during a snowstorm and there was no other way to set it. That took place in the early days of the last century when Harry Horton of Vineyard Haven was moving houses regularly, by land or by water, from one Island town to another.
Of course, as well as the beauty that snow brings, I like the quiet that comes with it — until the highway department vehicles get under way, clearing streets for vehicular traffic. Perhaps, in a day or two, I will take advantage of highway department’s road clearing endeavors and go out for a full-blown view of the snow. Then I will pick up the newspaper where it is left for me on Look’s Pond Way. On the first snow day of the year, however, neighbor Tim Maley thoughtfully brought it to me in his truck.
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