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DEPARTMENTS JANUARY 2010

Maddry—Show Me The Snow

Let’s hope for at least a foot or two of the white stuff this season.

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Bookmark and Share By Larry Maddry

 

I am a snow lover, and now that January is here I’ll begin checking the weather reports more closely. Perhaps this or that cold front sweeping down from the Arctic will bring peace and joy to my life with a snow blanket as comforting as the one Linnus used to drag around in the Peanuts column.
But it’s typically hard duty living south of the Mason-Dixon when you are a snow lover.  

“I was living in Wisconsin and came down here to get away from those brutal, cold winters,” a neighbor explained recently. “You live with snow for a while and you’ll get tired of it the way I did.”

That’s exactly what I want. So much snow I’ll get tired of it. Not the light coating we usually get like the dusting on a pound cake. I want to see it hip-deep with traffic stopped in all four directions.

I’ve been to Wisconsin in the winter and like the visuals up there. I remember sitting at a lakeside restaurant not far from the town of Hayward, Wis. bundled in a down-filled ski jacket and sipping coffee at dusk. Beyond the picture window giant firs bordering the lake stood in majestic silence burdened by the inches-deep snow coating their branches. The towering trees resembled super-sized athletes in white bathrobes, exhausted as they stood in place with arms outstretched awaiting their next physical challenge. 

As darkness fell the closer trees were still visible in the spotlights on the restaurant roof corners. The enveloping whiteness extended to the icy lake which was a platter of bone-white snow bordered by the trees. 

At some point during our meal, I can’t remember when, the motionless, somber scene came alive in the most amazing way. First one red dot, looking like the glowing red tip of a cigarette, moved quickly onto the snow-dusted lake, followed by another and another until about 10 of the snow mobiles were buzzing over the lake surface, zigging and zagging.

The display was absolutely silent from our enclosed hillside view in the distance. And we sat enthralled by the beauty and strangeness of the electric-red dots swirling over the snow-coated lake until we were told that they were definitely snow mobiles.
I am not advocating snow mobiles for Virginia Beach but it would be nice to get a good couple of feet of snow once in a while. 

I want to see snow flakes fluttering like white moths across my window panes. And snow coating the sand dunes with a foot or more of snow so that they look like white stuffed animals in a children’s nursery.

And here is what I don’t want to hear: weather folks on television telling me that Richmond got five inches of snow: “But we got a break and there’s only going to be a little sleet but nothing to worry about.”

I worry about the sanity of people who say things like that! I say bring it on. And I know there are a lot of closet snow lovers out there who have joined the “Pray for Snow Club.” 

Keep the faith guys ... this could be our year.

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