This Would Be Snow

I pull over to the side of the road where there’s enough space for one, maybe two vehicles. Vehicles slosh past me in the rain. My hair is now long enough that I can wrap it into a bun without any hair ties. I pull my raincoat hood over my head and place my humble binoculars in my pocket. I get out of my car and briefly walk along the side of the road, past a bundled up dirty diaper, until I disappear down a ravine of even more roadside garbage. I don’t relax until I know that no one from the road can see me.

Days ago, a push notification came up on my phone: People dreaming of a white Christmas may be in for a rude awakening. The article, written by my very own beloved husband, went on about Green Christmas and how white Christmases aren’t as prevalent as the Christmas songs may have you believe. At that time, I knew that a deluge of rain, from the west and the south, had its eyes set on Pennsylvania. Every year, as if it were a new conversation we’ve never had several times before, I told my husband that I remembered so many white Christmases and white days leading up to Christmas. My mind conjured up scenes of my parents’ car getting stuck in the snow at Christmas parties. My sensate mind remembered the warm glow of other peoples’ homes as I entered the threshold and the slush-wet shoes of other visitors during holiday parties. I remembered trying not to slip while carrying these gifts or those trays of cookies into other peoples’ homes. I remembered so many dark evenings in my childhood home, sitting in front of the picture window, watching the buzz of snow blowing past the orange street lamps on 5th Avenue. I remembered the nights where my mother and I walked down to the Allegheny River, just blocks away. Everything was so quiet except for the impact of snow on snow. We sat on a bench as the black river slithered below us, the power plant lights reflecting off its surface. I remembered thinking of those power plants as warm, breathing beasts hibernating under the snow. Surely these snowy memories aren’t from the Januaries or Februaries of my childhood? My husband, always supportive but gentle during this annual conversation, suggested that there may be memory bias.

And as usual, he probably wasn’t wrong.

Down the ravine and finally hidden from passersby, I relax my shoulders and take stock of the wetlands surrounding me. Being surrounded by invasive species such as privet, Japanese knotweed, and Tree of Heaven is no surprise but regardless they are existing here in their winter state. I uncover my ears the best I can so to hear past the rainfall, bustle of cars, and the droning of facilities in the distance. I possess a poor birding ear and even worse birding eyes. I have yet to figure out if walking quietly or loudly is best for birding. Do I want to alert them of my presence so that they start to bitch loudly about me? Do I sneak up on them to have a chance to be closer? My boots sink into mud, reminiscent of spring and its snowmelt. This time of year, I am hoping for needle ice, that soft frozen flower of ice that rises from loose soil. Although gorgeous to look at, I get a lot of satisfaction stepping on it. But today, nothing crunches under my feet other than thin sticks. The rain continues, spritzing my glasses. A blue jay calls in the distance and I imagine it midflight like a boomerang that will never return to me. And then I imagine it on a bough, surrounded by snow, the way it should be.

This would be snow, I told my husband yesterday as we watched the rain fall, if it were colder. I went outside and put bird food in the feeders. The atmosphere, moody with fog, beckoned me outside anyway, so I drove up the Allegheny Front, another level of land—sometimes another world. By habit, I watched the thermometer in my car as I reached higher and higher elevations. 45 degrees down in the valley where I live and 42 at the trail where my dog Silas and I explored. Usually there was at least a seven degree difference. With especially foggy aesthetics, I took moody pictures, everything muted and obscured in a new definition of winter. Silas, in his camouflage of ginger, seemed to disappear into the world and for a moment I envied him. He stepped in mud, unperturbed in his now-ness, his this-is-how-it-is-ness. A woodpecker followed us for about half a mile, playing that game of catch me if you can, like most birds do. Like a mourning dove, its flight had a song to it. By the end of our walk, Silas’ fur glistened with mist that he never shook off.

I pull my modest binoculars out of my pocket and scan the pond covered in duckweed before me. I direct my attention to what looks like a turtle head in the water, but it’s just a branch of some kind. I wonder how cold the water is, always curious if I have what it takes to dip my whole body in cold water, like a medicinal practice. My body has grown thicker over the years; my fat would make a lovely home for the cold. Snapping turtles live in this pond and are likely buried beneath the mud. Stones, alive. Everything, asleep. I feel as if I’m tip-toeing through a dormitory of sleeping beings. Their sap has traveled down to their roots. Their bodies have composted into the earth. I recently read that humans should sleep an extra two hours a night in the winter. Yet I have also read that the earliest humans slept in two shifts, going down with the sun only to arise again “hours” later, to the dark sky full of millions of bright messages.

Those night walks in the snow with my mother were never dark. The snowscape reflected the orange street lamps and the sky itself, pregnant with even more snow, shifted in layers of muted red. I don’t remember being terribly cold, but later in the warm bath my numb, red thighs itched.

Rounding the pond covered in duckweed, I come to a low threshold of poison hemlock, the plant that allegedly ended Socrates. Come summer, it will be taller than I am, its stem speckled with purple. Come summer, I will not be able to tread here. That’s what winter does; it allows passage. It speaks in footsteps and briars. It speaks in icicle and abandoned nests. It speaks in plumes of clouds that escape our mouths. It speaks in mud and slush. In puddle and pour. In birdsong. In humansong. I-want-snow, I-want-snow, I-want-snow!

I continue on, listening for the birds. Eventually, I come full circle and return to a marsh where White-throated Sparrows sing. I see several of them. I type their name into a notepad on my phone, a typo correcting it to White-throated Sorrow.