The Scent of Snow

The tiniest snowflake landed in my eye on the morning walk last Wednesday, and I went immediately to that place of wonder that the nerve endings in my cornea are sensitive enough to even register such an infinitesimally small and simple change in temperature and pressure. It felt cool for an instant as it melted, and I blinked it out of existence in a flash. Wonder on top of wonder, because I was also well into the dead goldenrod stalks when the snow started falling. That’s rare and cherished, to be right there when it all begins.

The last time it snowed, I was tucked in and wearing my work-from-home uniform (red plaid pajamas, aka Extremely Casual Friday), watching the flakes fall as I stood on the warm dry side of the living room windowpanes until it was just too stunningly beautiful to resist and I just HAD to be standing in the middle of it. Three and a half minutes later: sweatshirt, coat, leggings and boots on and I was making tracks, my mouth a near-permanent “oh!”—the only appropriate response to the view in every direction—as the acres pulled me forward. Every curve on the path unfolded to reveal a snow-christened scene more spectacular than the one I just passed through; the pure silence swallowed me whole.

I don’t really check the weather report much anymore since I’m mostly at home and don’t need to dress for a 22-minute commute in a vehicle that finally blows heat by the time I arrive in the parking lot. Here at home, the mileage from the breakfast table to the workplace is all indoors and involves a steep but short flight of stairs (shoes and socks are optional). Sure, you need to let the chickens out at dawn and lock them back up when the fields go all dusky gray. But you can slip on your boots, slide the quilted flannel coat hanging on the cast iron bell in the mudroom right over your pajamas and dash out to do the job long enough for the hems of your pantlegs to skim over the tallest blades of snow-dampened grass. I’m back inside before I even know it was chilly out there, using the hair dryer on those hems (the after-chicken-chores reward is sitting on the far left corner of the couch, legs tucked underneath me while I sip hot green tea and eat the day’s hard boiled egg. Nothing deflates the charm of that moment more than soggy pajama pants hems soaking one’s behind).

If I hadn’t needed to be in a work meeting that Wednesday morning, I could have easily talked myself into sitting at the feet of a young black walnut sapling just inside the entrance to the meadow, watching the sky unpack its load of snow one fistful of flakes at a time. I settled for an upstairs window-framed view of the snow as it fell thick and fast, coming to rest on the hood and windshield of my brother’s ‘68 Chevy truck parked in the grass between the old old goat barn and the field to the east. Hand-painted holiday cards don’t get more charming than that tableau (when I scavenge the neighborhood the week after Christmas for discarded trees by the curb, I’ll pick the greenest one to toss in the bed, then snap the photo for next year’s card). In less than an hour, three inches of snow piled up neatly on the deck and I took a moment to appreciate it before sweeping it aside and off into the grass.

There’s a scent to fresh snow that almost defies description (a fellow writer recently offered the phrase “frozen petrichor”—such a medieval-sounding collection of letters, isn’t it? Thanks, Augie). It’s a watery, mineral-infused aroma with an immediate sharpness to it, traces of earth and rarefied atmosphere mixed in, and now we’re bordering on those elegant but sometimes bizarre wine catalogue write-ups that use phrases like “forest floor”, “sagebrush undertones”, and “wet stone”. All I know is when I catch that first scent of new snow, I go sniffing hungrily for more of it, and that usually leads me as far away from the house as I can go while still staying within the surveyor pins that mark the boundaries of our property. It doesn’t take long before I’m distracted by the stark beauty of the snow-fluffed scene that surrounds me, filling the rest of my senses with more data than they can process. I can see where the deer have crisscrossed the cut paths (or created some of their own), browsed here and there on whatever green they could find among the brown grasses, and chewed strips of bark from the curly willow by the sweat lodge. I was thirty-six years old when I saw my first set of deer tracks in snow; twenty-some years later, this morning actually, and I’ve added “deer nose prints in the snow” to a growing list of All There is Still Left to See and Learn and Be Delighted By. Another reason why I’m not that afraid of getting older. There’s so much I still don’t know yet.

Predictions for this year’s season are already grim and meeting our anxious expectations. We don’t dispute them or take them lightly. But wrapped in the warmth of a good home and beckoned by the unrelenting beauty of a landscape that knows no end to its own gifts, we still willingly step into winter, eyes wide open to catch the sights, and perhaps a few more stray flakes. What else can we do but be present to what the moment gives us?

I lace up my boots, pull on my gloves and inhale that frozen petrichor one more time. Ahhh…