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It's very different from the day before. And the snow then starts telling stories—a bird walked here, a deer there, a skier crossed this hill, the neighbor got in his car and drove away, whatever.
And then sometimes the snow tells bizarre stories that aren't even true, or that were true once, years ago, in the Alps, but even that once was amazingly unlikely. Long story short, I'm practicing the piano, take a moment's break, look out at the sidewalk, and see a face half-buried in the snow. Eyes, nose, one ear emerging from the ice, it was all there, the way they found the previously mentioned Otzi the Iceman in the mountains. It was one of those strange moments that pull you up short, like when Scrooge saw Marley's face in the door knocker. People complain about the snow, but that seems wrong to me, when it works so hard and so successfully to entertain. Yes, you have to shovel it away, and walk carefully when it's slippery, but I think that's a small enough price to pay.
But I've been working, and in the course of doing one story I ended up at a reception after an event, and there was a wide patio with a fire pit at the western end of the home where it was held. I was on an upper level at one point, talking with a woman who had a table set up to display a book she'd done about a nearby village and a church that had stood there for a long time. Someone else strolled up and mentioned that someone she had known was buried there. The author recognized the name, paged through the book, and held it out. There it was, a picture of the gravestone, with a little girl standing next to it, tracing the letters of the name with a small pink finger.
It was one of those great photos where there's a tremendous tension; there it was, life and death. The author said she'd been there taking pictures and this little girl just walked up to the gravestone and the moment came together. These things are called "grab shots," because they usually only last long enough for you to get the camera up to your eye and shoot.
As we were talking, a guy was down below messing with the fire pit, putting on more wood, and the new wood must have been damp, because suddenly the whole lower level was filled with smoke. The guy himself was swathed in smoke like a wizard making a dramatic entrance, and with the light of the setting sun behind him he was silhouetted in this fun, mysterious way. I happened to have my own camera on the table, and I picked it up with one hand, thumbing it on, got it to my eye and shot three frames. And sure enough, a puff of breeze came along, the smoke dissipated, and the moment was gone.
The woman looked at me and grinned, her eyes gleaming avidly. "I like that," she said. "The way the light was on the top of his head." I liked her a lot in that moment. They say hunters have a sense of fraternity when they're out in the field, and I think it was something like that. You train your eye and your reflexes, stay alert, and react when you need to—with a camera if you have one, or if not, at least by noticing and appreciating what you're seeing. It's a nice habit to be in yourself, and I appreciate it in others too. So anyway, hello again! It's breakfast time and I'm hungry so bye for now.
I can't say the last day of 2007 started with any special drama, except that I went down my back steps carefully because they looked, and were, icy. (I was less wary the last time we had the same conditions, and wound up doing a flamingo's hornpipe for the amusement of the neighbors.)
So warily down the stairs I went, and when I got to terra firma I saw to my annoyance that the car windows were heavily frosted over. As usual, I was running late (breakfast was the traditional cup of coffee, hastily gulped) and this would add a devastating minute and a half or so to the leaving process. But then I stopped myself and looked a little closer.
This wasn't ordinary frost. It was, unequivocally and for the record, the most beautiful, lavish, profligate example of automotive frost I'd ever seen. Every inch of the car's windows was covered with delicately inscribed sprays, curlicues, fringed fernlike shapes, a profusion of delicate, graceful curving lines, with tiny parallel hatchmarks between them. Despite my hurry, I couldn't resist the impulse to put the briefcase in the car, get out the camera, and look the whole thing over, recording its damasked loveliness.
You may never see a car's windows frosted over quite this perfectly again, I thought. You've been late to work before, and will almost certainly be late to work again. Being late to work is not unique. But this is, I thought. It was what Keats would call "unpremeditated art," and it was worth a moment.
The moment over, I had to take this loveliness and ruthlessly destroy it. Hit the rear window defroster button, put the defroster up high, and start scraping away everywhere with a black plastic scraper. I felt bad. But my only other options were to sit and wait until it melted naturally, which might take an hour, or try to drive the car without being able to see out of it, which would result in a lot of crashing and awkward explaining, so you see my position.
There's something about frost, isn't there, when it's patterned like that? It's created only by the laws of physics, so it can't possibly be an expression of emotion, and it can't be art either. But there's something in snowflakes, or frost, or the spiral of the chambered nautilus' shell. There's a mathematical loveliness to it, and some sort of message, I've always thought. At any rate, it's possible to look at that nautilus shell or the patterns in the frost and feel a certain quiet awe. You feel that, and then you snap out of it and start the car, because you've got to get to work.
