Snow Day

It's a snow day-- the first for this school year. The woodstove is glowing and crackling away, there's the lovely gingerbread house my daughter made in the middle of the table, the Christmas tree is lit (though not yet decorated). Oh, there is work to be done; in fact, it gets downright frustrating sometimes how few weeks I actually manage to have five full workdays. Who sets these school calendars, anyway? Three days off for Thanksgiving, two days off for parent-teacher conferences, one day off for teacher trainings; add to that days when my daughter's been sick, and months on end can go by without a full workweek.

But living in Vermont or any northern snowy clime, you learn the peaceful surrender to snow days. People say that living in a northern climate builds fortitude and character, to deal with all that ice and snow. But I think it does something better than that: it develops flexibility. Fact is, in winter, there are days when you adapt your schedule to accomodate the weather. And come to think of it, not only in winter.

One of the great joys of rural living is being closer to the land, nature, the cycles of the year and the foibles of weather. If the day is sunny and gorgeous, get out and take advantage of it. Hike, bike, garden, get that outdoor painting project done. If snow is falling, load up the woodstove and get the oven going for cookies, or curl up with a book, or clear off the kitchen table for a craft project. And when some things are in season, they have to be attended to immediately or missed until the next year: fiddleheads are around for picking for only about a week in the early spring, and then they've gone by; cherries and wild grapes are perfectly ripe for only a day or two before the birds and critters have them picked clean. When tomatoes are ripe, they're ripe; miss them by a day or two and they are rotten.

If you drive from a suburban house or apartment to an artificially-lit office cubical five days a week all year regardless of the weather, and book vacations based on calendar days or when you own your timeshare slot, it's easy to miss things like fiddlehead season, the perfect day for picking wild grapes, or that wonderful sigh of peaceful surrender to a snow day. True, it means that your paycheck and expenses are steady and you can schedule vacation time with family in a more organized fashion -- but I think something is also lost along the way. There is a deep, natural satisfaction in a life tied even in these simple ways to the rhythm of life in all the wider Creation rather than the rhythm of bricks, pavement, and the dashed yellow lines of highways.

But I don't think living in a more urban area necessarily means you have to sever this connection with the world outside human constructions. Open a window; plant a garden in a window box; take a walk when the sunshines, and sit peacefully on a park bench or even in a bus-stop kiosk on days it rains. Start household traditions based on the seasons: drive out to a farm and pick strawberries or apples, find a local pond and try to catch spring peepers.

And today, it's snowing. Stay home. Bake cookies. Experience serenity.