Like a guest who won't go home

 The snow is slowly wearing off and lifting away, threadbare on lawns, sunken into roots of trees. Where the plows have pushed it, lumpy heaps linger, dirty laundry piles nobody wants to deal with. Maybe this is the vision of snow some people wrap around themselves when they say, incredibly enough, "I hate snow."

Most everyone here at U of I seems to either love it or hate it. I wonder about those who don't voice their opinions: Is the snow almost miraculous to them still, a child's gleeland? Or do they secretly loathe it, but don't want to admit how grown-up and weary of cold complication they've become? Or, most interestingly, are there those who fear they're losing their wonder? Am I one of them?

I'm a Willamette Valley woman. Every day I step outside and think, "Oh look. It's still here! Huh." It's a new feeling: snow's novelty evaporating. Oh, each morning the white land is a little different. Wavy edgings retreat, melted and refrozen, smashed grass gets unsmothered. On my walk to class, the sunshine blinks off thousands of large ice crystals formed over the remaining snowfields. Wonder changes shape. And I think, with our next snowfall, the wonder and joy will start afresh. I hope so.

Ugh. But necessary. Actually, these guys are totally on the ball.

That's better. From McCall's Winter Carnival. I want to go, don't you?

Crystal math

Not long ago, I thought flocked Christmas trees were meant to simulate snow on branches. (Just yesterday, to be truthful.) Today I know more precisely: it's hoarfrost, because today it's all around.

These are not Moscow trees, only their cousins somewhere.

Only a little frost lit on the grass this morning, but the trees were thick with it, and a cold fog blurred the town below us as I walked the campus. When I emerged from my math final (triumphant :), the trees were even whiter than before. What do you know? I've seen ice storms settle on trees, glorious and destructive, but not this. Oregon's fogs are cuddly compared to this winter's-breath.
 

Did I mention I like it here?