(Host)
Now that most of Vermont has enough snow to say so, commentator Martha
Molnar is contemplating her very long driveway with a mixture of what
you might call ‘optimistic resignation.’
(Molnar) Even now, deep
into our fourth winter in Vermont, when I really should know better,
the sound of the snowplow is filled with the promise of deliverance.
With his big truck and plow mounted at a rakish angle, Jeff will make
short order of the layers that fell, drifted and cascaded all day and
night on our road.
It’s really a driveway, but it’s long enough for neighbors to call it our road.
When
Jeff leaves, his job is done, and done well. Ted and I walk its length
just for the pleasure of walking with such ease, observing the layers of
snow, ice and sand in its canyon walls, as fluid and beautiful as an
oil abstract. It’s wonderful, as the wind picks up, to be in this
protected narrow world.
The wind of course, is the beginning of the end of this world.
Maybe
this time, I offer – my voice rising in a false note of hope – it will
blow from the east and blow the remnants still on the road right off.
Ted reminds me that the wind never blows from the east, so it always buries the road.
Next
morning, sure enough, the wind has moved the snow from the nearby
fields to our road, where it gleams in monstrous drifts, hoodoos and
spires.
We pile on the layers and pick up our implement of
choice. My shovel is a smaller than standard version. It’s bright red,
with an ergonomic bent that’s meant to eliminate the backache that
follows the lifting and heaving of a couple of tons of snow.
Surveying the damage, we fall into our individual default modes.
Ted works up an enviable rhythm. His eyes narrow with focused concentration. Push, raise, fling, push, raise, fling.
I
dig in and soon try a different angle. Perhaps if I attack from the
side… or fling over my head rather than twisting each time. Maybe
section the accumulation into even amounts. Then again, that’s an extra
and probably wasted step. So I start a tire-sized row, walk 20 feet and
start in the other direction. Now I can see a beginning and an end. The
issue is the middle.
It’s the snow itself, I finally decide. How
can what was fluff yesterday become so much tonnage? It must be
perception. But then, as I recently learned, when it comes to snow,
perception and fact just happen to merge seamlessly.
New fallen
snow undergoes very rapid change as crystals are transformed into
aggregates of ice grains. Within a few hours, snow density may double.
This is followed by settling, in this case aided by wind, which reduces
the spaces between the snow grains, further increasing its density.
I ponder these mysteries as I move between the leaden packs. Ted is moving faster than me, so we meet… not quite in the middle.
"Better than lifting weights in a health club," I offer.
"Next winter in Florida!" I think he yells moving uphill. But his words are carried off, sucked into a funnel of whipping air.