Christmas snow is magic. New and clean and cold and powdery, it holds the promise of new beginnings, sleigh rides, and sugar plums (whatever the hell they are). Snow in December is a misty eyed Norman Rockwell joy. It’s beautiful. Plowing snow in December is a kinetic joyride.
March snow is a slog. Plowing snow in March is Kafkaesque. It’s a house guest that clogs the toilet, cleans out the fridge, and won’t leave no matter how much you drop the hint that its welcome has worn thin. It’s a gray oatmeal of misery shat upon a watery base of weak ice and layers of slime. It reeks of tax forms and moldy basements. Shining machinery once proudly tuned for battle in nature’s seasonal maelstrom has been reduced to iced up crevices in the snow blower’s infrastructure and frayed winch cables on the ATV. The woodpile, once stacked like glorious battlements, has been picked down and sags in terminal decline. My proud little tractor lies unused because its backblade can’t shove snow chest high and the wheel cleats would only spin on the packed snow base. In December it was perfect. In March it’s outgunned. Chickens are moulting, attitudes are harsh, and the beer is running low. We have held the line bravely but the siege has been long.
Winter has taken its toll. I am ready for spring.